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Ash
Bushfires, Bastards and Love
Australia has always been dangerous...
Ben Ashman is a man trapped in a small coastal town with only the three F’s for distraction - fishing, firefighting and fucking. Yet he faces two problems - his thug of a father and half-brothers, and the fact that he sleeps with men. He keeps his head down, and tries to stay out of trouble. Most of the year, that is.
Then Christmas rolls around and the sweltering summer brings blokes on their break and bushfires to battle. Into town comes Adrian King - rich, confident and good-looking - Adrian seems a great catch, and he’s luring for Ben’s attention. Yet the path to happiness is rough - a time of trials by fire. The choices they make in love and their lives may soon become a matter of survival…
Australia has always been dangerous...
Ben Ashman is a man trapped in a small coastal town with only the three F’s for distraction - fishing, firefighting and fucking. Yet he faces two problems - his thug of a father and half-brothers, and the fact that he sleeps with men. He keeps his head down, and tries to stay out of trouble. Most of the year, that is.
Then Christmas rolls around and the sweltering summer brings blokes on their break and bushfires to battle. Into town comes Adrian King - rich, confident and good-looking - Adrian seems a great catch, and he’s luring for Ben’s attention. Yet the path to happiness is rough - a time of trials by fire. The choices they make in love and their lives may soon become a matter of survival…
- GenresRomance
263 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 2014
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Lance V. Ramsey
3 books8 followersA gay author writing books that tell stories about the places he loves, and people in love in them.
You can contact me by email lancewrites@gmail.com or Twitter @lancewrites
You can contact me by email lancewrites@gmail.com or Twitter @lancewrites
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 14, 2014
What a great plot full of interesting and great characters. This is Christmas Australia style with the added bonus of an out of control Bush fire and nasty relatives.
Rich, city boy Adrian has bought a vacation house in a small coastal town and there he meets Ben, firefighter and all-round hunk. Both characters carry with them a certain amount of baggage....their families, and things turn nasty for both protagonists.
Loved it. A couple of things jarred. The conversations between Adrian's group of gay friends confused me at times, they tend to speak in abbreviations to which I was not privy as a reader. I found myself skipping paragraphs as I had no idea what they were talking about, but so saying that didn't affect the plot. There are a lot of secondary characters which took all my concentration trying to remember who was who, and who was partnered, or an ex of whom. Lovely HEA/Epilogue....seven years later.
Worth pointing out that there is a Glossary at the end of the book which explains the language and abbreviations used in the novel (wish I'd know before finishing the story).
Loved it.
Rich, city boy Adrian has bought a vacation house in a small coastal town and there he meets Ben, firefighter and all-round hunk. Both characters carry with them a certain amount of baggage....their families, and things turn nasty for both protagonists.
Loved it. A couple of things jarred. The conversations between Adrian's group of gay friends confused me at times, they tend to speak in abbreviations to which I was not privy as a reader. I found myself skipping paragraphs as I had no idea what they were talking about, but so saying that didn't affect the plot. There are a lot of secondary characters which took all my concentration trying to remember who was who, and who was partnered, or an ex of whom. Lovely HEA/Epilogue....seven years later.
Worth pointing out that there is a Glossary at the end of the book which explains the language and abbreviations used in the novel (wish I'd know before finishing the story).
Loved it.
December 9, 2014
This book is what I call a challenging read, but well worth the effort because of its rich emotional reward. The challenge of the book comes threefold. For one thing the book is based in Australia and uses a lot of terminology that I’m guessing is used down under. A glossary would have helped, but maybe not as the second challenge is that the author uses a lot of fragments in place of full sentences. While this does create a feeling of spontaneity, his overuse of fragments plus the practice of placing the reader into situations with the barest of settings left me grasping for something to hold on to.
I ended up grabbing a hold of the lead character Adrian who is approaching his thirtieth birthday and has escaped the big city for some downtime. He needs a break from a series of mystery relationship dramas back home, one being pressure from his father to marry. So semi-closeted Adrian meets hunky, closeted fireman Ben when he burns the roast he is cooking for a housewarming party with his friends. His friends’ arrival brought me to the third challenge of this book: I was thrown into an arena of insider jokes and clever dialogue with only hints of who these people were and how they relate to Adrian. I know “gay banter” from my own circle of friends, but I felt like an outsider with Adrian and his crew pretty much throughout the book. Again this could have been an Aussie wit thing.
So for me, the challenge of this book was to recognize and retain the important clues about the people and places in the story so that I could grasp Adrian’s “until Ben” life and Ben’s “until Adrian” life, as I could then enjoy the dynamics between them as a couple. The reward of the story is that beneath the cleverness of the writing style, Adrian and Ben are highly relatable. Their angst frankly highlights the “ugly” inside that we all harbor and attempt to conceal from others. Adrian and Ben are flawed, vulnerable humans—not to the extent that they believe they are—but then we are often the last to realize that our strengths lie within our vulnerabilities. This truth is what I believe the author has captured beautifully and is what makes this story a winner.
Prepare to be moved. This story got me upset more than a few times, and at times I could not stand these two men or the author and his strange writing style. For example—Ben’s got an abusive stepfather and half-siblings who bully the entire town, so bashing Ben around is habitual. This kind of irked me, because I had pictured Ben as a youthful, strapping fireman, but upon looking back, I realized I hadn’t really been given a description other than he’s blond, muscular, and hot. Maybe Ben is big, but apparently his twin brothers and his step daddy are huge because he was getting beat down—a lot— to the point where I was yelling, “Hey dude, just don’t go home!” and “Pick up a baseball bat and fight back!” But apparently Ben has low self-esteem issues. Which sadly Adrian has as well. At one point the twins had Adrian in their sights and I positively hated that he pretty much cowered in fear and did not attempt to fight back, but that’s a truth for some. I give major points for that scene because right after reading it I had an excellent workout kicking the heavy bag while imaging what I would do to those twins in Adrian’s place … so I was definitely moved.
I can’t even mention the most rewarding parts of the book because that would be a spoiler. I will just say that these two men go through a lot of angst before they get their happily ever after. Despite the challenging writing style the book is a gem because its heart rings true.
Thank you, Lance V. Ramsey, for raising my temperature in a variety of ways…
“Raw, Alien, Familiar…Love”
NOTE: This book was provided by the author for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews.
I ended up grabbing a hold of the lead character Adrian who is approaching his thirtieth birthday and has escaped the big city for some downtime. He needs a break from a series of mystery relationship dramas back home, one being pressure from his father to marry. So semi-closeted Adrian meets hunky, closeted fireman Ben when he burns the roast he is cooking for a housewarming party with his friends. His friends’ arrival brought me to the third challenge of this book: I was thrown into an arena of insider jokes and clever dialogue with only hints of who these people were and how they relate to Adrian. I know “gay banter” from my own circle of friends, but I felt like an outsider with Adrian and his crew pretty much throughout the book. Again this could have been an Aussie wit thing.
So for me, the challenge of this book was to recognize and retain the important clues about the people and places in the story so that I could grasp Adrian’s “until Ben” life and Ben’s “until Adrian” life, as I could then enjoy the dynamics between them as a couple. The reward of the story is that beneath the cleverness of the writing style, Adrian and Ben are highly relatable. Their angst frankly highlights the “ugly” inside that we all harbor and attempt to conceal from others. Adrian and Ben are flawed, vulnerable humans—not to the extent that they believe they are—but then we are often the last to realize that our strengths lie within our vulnerabilities. This truth is what I believe the author has captured beautifully and is what makes this story a winner.
Prepare to be moved. This story got me upset more than a few times, and at times I could not stand these two men or the author and his strange writing style. For example—Ben’s got an abusive stepfather and half-siblings who bully the entire town, so bashing Ben around is habitual. This kind of irked me, because I had pictured Ben as a youthful, strapping fireman, but upon looking back, I realized I hadn’t really been given a description other than he’s blond, muscular, and hot. Maybe Ben is big, but apparently his twin brothers and his step daddy are huge because he was getting beat down—a lot— to the point where I was yelling, “Hey dude, just don’t go home!” and “Pick up a baseball bat and fight back!” But apparently Ben has low self-esteem issues. Which sadly Adrian has as well. At one point the twins had Adrian in their sights and I positively hated that he pretty much cowered in fear and did not attempt to fight back, but that’s a truth for some. I give major points for that scene because right after reading it I had an excellent workout kicking the heavy bag while imaging what I would do to those twins in Adrian’s place … so I was definitely moved.
I can’t even mention the most rewarding parts of the book because that would be a spoiler. I will just say that these two men go through a lot of angst before they get their happily ever after. Despite the challenging writing style the book is a gem because its heart rings true.
Thank you, Lance V. Ramsey, for raising my temperature in a variety of ways…
“Raw, Alien, Familiar…Love”
NOTE: This book was provided by the author for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews.
October 31, 2014
Really enjoyed this. Longer review to follow. The description of the bushfire was spot on. You could hear the crackle, smell the smoke and taste the ash. Loved the banter amongst the friends which, for once, seemed real. Bitchiness and all. The punctuation threw me for a bit until I discovered it is UK non fiction style. Sort of.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews