Blog Tour: Amber To Ashes By Gail McHugh

 They were a storm I never saw coming, an unforeseen heartbreak on the edge of a dangerous cliff.

In AMBER TO ASHES (Atria Paperback; June 9^th, 2015), Amber Moretti’s life changes in the span of minutes. An orphaned outsider, she is desperate to start fresh the moment she walks onto campus. In the time it takes to cross the university’s dining hall, she meets two men who bring color, air, and light to her darkened world.

They became my addiction, each a needle to my next hit, my high.

Brock Cunningham’s appeal is dizzying, a potent force Amber can’t deny. A green-eyed smooth talker, he instantly attracts Amber. It doesn’t take long for him to consume her every thought, her every breath.

Ryder Ashcroft, a blue-eyed, tattooed, and pierced bad boy, turns Amber off immediately—that is, until he kisses her, stealing a piece of her heart, her soul.

They were as opposite as fire and ice, yet I ached for them equally. 

Never knowing she could be broken down in so many unexpectedly beautiful yet petrifying ways, Amber finds herself falling for both men.

Immoral? Maybe. I say undeniable. Uncontained.

But one devastating event changes everything, shattering each of their lives...and Amber isn’t sure she can recover from it.

I have been try to find the best way to word this review, and even now that I am at my laptop typing away I am still searching for the best way to word my thoughts and feelings about Amber To Ashes.  I am going to admit it took me a couple tries of picking up my kindle, reading pissed or upset before setting it back down again swearing I wasn’t going to finish it.  Then a couple days later I would repeat that same process and so on.  I don’t know if it was my mood at the time or what but I had a hard time getting into it, but then I finally forced myself to sit down and give Amber To Ashes an honest final attempt and I am glad I did.  I love a storyline that is filled with angst, love triangles, emotional roller coaster rides and smoking hot sex scenes.  So for me to take so long to get into a book that had all of these was strange.

In respect for the author I don’t want to give any type of spoilers away, I know some readers like spoilers and some don’t but I respect author’s and really try not to spoil anything in their books if I can help it.  I will say this, be prepared.  Be prepared to yell, scream, curse, cry, feel like your stomach is in a never ending knot because Amber To Ashes will do all of those things to you, multiple times.  Hell my own anxiety sky rocketed while I was reading and I am just reading the book, not one of the characters.  I can’t wait for book two to be released because I just have to know what will happen next.

I had tried to read this author’s previous series and got about halfway through Collide before I set it down, I still plan to go back because I know if I can work past my crazy emotions in Amber To Ashes then I will be able to continue on with that one.  If you are like me and may have had a hard time reading Amber To Ashes in the beginning, please pick it up one more time and give it that final last try because I know now had I not done that I would be regretting my decision down the road.

Order the AMBER TO ASHES paperback:

Amazon

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Order the AMBER TO ASHES eBook:

Amazon's Kindle Store

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Blio

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Google ebookstore

iBooks

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 About the author:

Gail McHugh is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Collide and Pulse. She is the mother of three beautiful children and has been married to her husband for fifteen years.

Visit Gail online at:

http://www.authorgailmchugh.com/

Twitter: @Gail_McHugh

Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorGailMcHugh

Enter the giveaway!

Enter to win one of ten signed copies of AMBER TO ASHES by visiting the blog tour rafflecopter! link directly to: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/7e0813e14/

Review: Collide by Gail McHugh

★ FYI: Sarcasm is one of my many talents and this review has it in spades... You've been warned. ★

 What. The. Heck. Was. This.

How this book pulled off so many fabulous reviews and ratings is beyond me. I’m shocked, if I’m being completely honest here. First of all, the heroine was obnoxiously annoying… Her boyfriend was the epitome of douchebag… And the hero was a sissy with stalker tendencies. I have no idea how to even begin writing this review, so I’ll just start it off by enlightening you on what this book entails:

Boy sees girl.

Boy falls instantly in love with girl literally a second after seeing her.

Girl has a douchebag boyfriend.

Girl doesn’t realize that said boyfriend is a douchebag and ignores all obvious douchebag tendencies.

Girl ignores boy because she loves said boyfriend.

Boy doesn’t care that girl ignores him or has a douchebag boyfriend.

Boy spends every waking second of every freaking day chasing girl.

Girl eventually comes to her senses and instantly realizes that she's in love with boy. ...Yeah, you’d like to think that's what happened… But readers don’t even get a happily-ever-after in this book because it ends on an effing cliffhanger! Be right back...

That’s just what every reader loves to find out after reaching that last page, am I right? No. I’m not right. Cliffhangers suck… And to read through a 400 page book that you didn’t even like in the first place, only to find out it doesn’t even have a happily-ever-after? Well… That just makes you want to kill yourself.

Now mind you, I’m all for a drama-filled book. I live for books like that… Stories full of angst and emotion. Usually books that revolve around a love triangle have all that in spades, so that isn’t what made me dislike this book. When you’re reading a story revolving around this theme, you’re bound to run into a few things that annoy you- It’s completely understandable. Take the book Thoughtless for example: The entire book was based on that theme and the heroine tended to grate on my nerves at times. But when it’s done correctly, it shouldn’t really be enough to affect your rating or how you felt about the book as a whole. It’s why to this day, I still think about that book and why it’s still considered an absolute favorite of mine. However, this book is a prime example of how this theme can sometimes go horribly wrong.

For starters, I hate despise the whole love at first sight crap. The fact that someone can fall instantly in love with a person in a matter of seconds is completely unrealistic to me. …And don’t even get me started on how much I detest a hero who consistently chases after the heroine. Of course this is exactly what the hero did throughout the entire book- Every single freaking page was filled with either his insistent whining… Moping… Or stalking.

Not attractive.

The characters in this story in general weren’t the least bit likable. I’m all for a door-mat heroine who tends to be a bit too naive for her own good, but Emily was just an idiot. How every person… (And I literally mean every single person) thought she was the world’s most beautiful woman is beyond me. The only physical trait we knew that she had was what color her hair and eyes were. ...And for the love of God, I think that we all got that she was pretty after the fourteenth thousandth time of it being mentioned.

As for Emily's boyfriend Dillon... The guy was the epitome of douche-bag. Conjure up in your head the biggest douche on the face of this planet and then multiply that by a million… That would be Dillon. He had absolutely no redeemable qualities… None. He was disgusting in every sense of the word, and Emily just couldn’t get enough of him. I never once had that epiphany moment where I thought to myself: Oh wait… I guess I can see why she loves him so much. He would consistently cheat on her… Verbally abuse her… And then throw in an occasional man-handle when the need arose. Why bother with Gavin (The sweet, loving, and loyal hero) when she had such a good catch for a boyfriend, am I right?

By the time I reached the last page of this book, I still never really felt like the heroine loved the hero or was even worthy of him. He was always the one chasing her… Always the one apologizing to her… Always the one complimenting her… Always the one taking care of her… Yet, all she ever did was think about Dillon and his feelings.


"Her body might want Gavin, but in no way, shape, or form did her mind…" -Emily


*sigh* …How nice. That’s exactly the type of romance that I love to read about. ...I hate to have to say this, but the hero Gavin was just as pathetic and stupid. From the moment he lays eyes on Emily, he spends every waking moment letting her consume his thoughts. He didn’t care that she had a boyfriend… He didn’t care that she always chose her boyfriend over him… He didn’t care that she would run away from him… Despite the crappy way she treated him, he chased after her as much as she spent chasing after another man.


"Gavin had no doubt in his heart that she loved him; She’d spent the last twenty-four hours proving that. However, he couldn’t ignore that there was still a possibility she might change her mind about him once Dillon returned." -Gavin


So let’s get this straight: He has no doubt that she loves him… But once her boyfriend gets back in town she might run back to him? Riggght… Because that’s true love.

I could go on and on about the reasons why I hated this book, but if I were to do that we’d all be a hundred years old. I may be in the minority here, but I honest to God have absolutely no idea how anyone could like this book- It’s completely unfathomable to me. If you like to read a boring and repetitive story with absolutely no depth and character development, then by all means have a go at this book. ...And while you're doing that, I'll be getting my money back.