Own The Wind (Chaos #1) by Kristen Ashley
Romance Contemporary
Paperback
April 2, 2013
Hachette

Reviewed by Tori

Favorite Quote: “May feel like you’re fallin’, Tabby, but remember, I’m at the bottom, waiting to catch you.”

Tabitha (Tabby) Allen, princess of the Chaos Motorcycle Club, has always had a family of brothers to fall back on, but she has always wanted more from one brother- Shy Cage. Fate has conspired through the years to keep them apart until a tragedy brings them together and Tabby intends to make Shy realize that he is the one she was born to love.

Shy has always been aware of Tabby’s crush but thought nothing of it until one fateful night when he decides to teach her a hard lesson and in her goodbye to him, she kisses him and the taste of her permeates his skin and remains on his tongue for years. When she makes it known to him that he is the biker boss for her, Shy considers himself the luckiest man on the planet, but Tabby being the Club president’s daughter makes her off limits. Shy is ready to take on the world and his brothers to claim Tabby for his own, but will fate allow them this ride or will they crash and burn?

From the first introduction in Motorcycle Man, fans have glommed on the possibility of a romance between the reigning princess of the Chaos MC, Tabitha Allen, and the sexy Chaos biker, Parker “Shy” Cage. When it was announced that the first of a spin off series, Chaos, would give the readers just that, a happy squeeeee was heard around the fandom of Kristen Ashley.

I wasn’t sure at first how this would work because both were rather young in Motorcycle Man (Tabby is 17 and Shy is 22) and I wasn’t looking forward to watching Tabby continue to have her heart broken by a VERY promiscuous and seemingly clueless Shy as we saw in MM. However, I should just learn to trust Ashley because it does work.

Own The Wind picks up with Tabby in college, working towards her nursing degree. We watch as her and Shy’s life intertwine through a series of events that spans approximately six years. The story is told in increments, skipping a month or so through time, bringing us back each time at pivotal moments. Fast paced with a solid story line and well plotted scenes. The focus of the story remains solely on Tabby and Shy’s romance. We watch as they go from dislike to friendship to eventually love. It’s not a perfect love story. Shy and Tabby bring plenty of baggage with them to the relationship and their personalities are a guaranteed fight waiting to happen. Also, Tabby’s crush on Shy was seen through rose colored glasses. Once she gets to know the real Shy, she realizes that while she may be a princess, he is not her white knight, and this is not a fairy tale. Both have some maturing to do and the journey is rocky for them.

There is a genuine sense of realism in here that isn’t as prevalent in the previous books. What makes Ashley’s books so cracktacular is the overall fairy tale sense of romance and the dreamlike men incorporated into her contemporaries. She has given us the alpha hero. Strong, gorgeous, intelligent, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He takes what he wants and gives his all to the woman he loves. It’s swoon worthy romantic. It’s panty wetting romantic. It’s also not real and most of us would bury a man who acted like Ashley’s heroes in a shallow unmarked grave in real life. Tabby and Shy are a realistic couple in that Tabby was raised in Shy’s world. She knows his lifestyle as well as he does. There is no introduction or training of the heroine to accept the man and the world she has chosen to enter. She is his equal and there are not a lot of Ashley’s heroines like that. Dusty, Nina, and Sylvie are a few who are also equal to their respective mates.

Tabby and Shy’s relationship is slow and steady as they struggle with preconceived notions and  outside negativity. One impressive point in this story is that their romance is used to facilitate a new generation of bikers. We see some of the stereotypical biker attitudes being challenged. Shy doesn’t hold to the mentality of controlling his woman as some of his biker brethren does and makes that quite clear.

“Tab and I don’t play that way. You want to order your old lady around, do what you do, not for me to say. I asked her to go, she didn’t go. Not gonna make her. But you try, you’ll deal with me.”

 

“You’d give up your brothers for a woman?”
“ Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Tabby is also dealing with being seen as a woman and not a child. I have to say her day of reckoning was epic and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing some arses get spanked, by her, for the way they reacted to her and Shy dating.

“You don’t get to think. Dad doesn’t get to think. Big Petey. Dog. Brick. Boz. Natalie. All you all…don’t get to think. I live my life, no matter how much you or Dad or anyone loves me, or how much I love you all, you don’t get to live my life for me, tell me how to live it or judge me for the decisions I make.”

The growth in here is evident, both character and arc wise. The secondary characters are as vivid and personable as her protagonists.We see many old friends from the Chaos world and meet a couple of new ones who guarantee that we haven’t seen the last of our beloved MC. As with most of Ashley’s books, we are given our HEA and a glimpse into the future to assure us that our couple is truly happy.

As with Raid though, I did find the missing additional external sub plots and descriptions to be discouraging. In her early books, the individualism that Ashley imparts to her characters was one of the reasons I fell in love with her stories. Each character had a life that existed beyond the romance. We are given a look into the mundane and it gifted her characters with a four dimensional aspect. We learned Tyra liked yoga and movies in Motorcycle Man. We learned, in depth, about Tessa’s baking ability in Wild Man. Gwen’s romance writing in Mystery Man was a large part of the story line. In here, it seems that Shy and Tabby had very little individualism. Very few scenes do we see Tabby or Shy alone, doing something that doesn’t involve each other. There is very little interaction from other series characters. I was very surprised in one scene where Elvira appears and tells us that she knows about a fight between Tab and Shy. In an earlier book, we would have seen a scene involving Tyna and her crew, giggling and discussing Tab and Shy’s romance and the fight. We don’t even know what kind of car Tabby drives. That was disappointing. While I’ll always love Ashley and the different worlds she has opened up to me, the mainline streaming of her work is cutting into the very aspect that made her stories so different and addicting.

Regardless of my misgivings, Ashley continues to be an auto buy author for me and I dread the day when everyone’s story has been told and we reach the end.

Overall Rating: B