Ashes Ashes Review by Jessica Goeken

Review of Ashes, Ashes

By: Jessica Goeken

            Seventeen-year-old Adrienne Young is a combat magi making her one of the rare magi that can kill monsters.  For her new mission she finds college girls are worshipping and allowing the Witch Goddess Hecate to enter our plane of existence.  She wants a new vessel for her spirit, Liza, Adrienne’s foster sister, who is powerful enough despite being only 12.  Adrienne must stop Hecate all the while juggling school and her new boyfriend Alex who turns out to be a Hedge Witch.

            This is a fun fast paced read that gives off Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes complete with snarky teen humor.  Adrienne is a badass struggling with trying to lead and teach her foster siblings how to fight monsters and harness their magi skills.  I liked seeing a love interest that could keep up with Adrienne and wasn’t some damsel in distress.  He had magic of his own and wasn’t overprotective, though he did worry about Adrienne a lot.  They had a good balance and an equal relationship for the early stages of it.  I’m predicting we will get a love triangle with Mason maybe revealing he loves Adrienne, but I could be wrong.  Goeken does include the disappearing parents’ trope (though they were technically kidnapped), but I appreciated that it was explained that the council allowed the teens to take charge, because the council wasn’t as strong do to get older, making it less bothersome that she took the parents out of the equation.  I will admit it helped Adrienne’s arc of learning to be a leader.   It was fast paced as I said, but there were a lot of plot threads going that made the story complicated.  I could have done without the school stuff because it felt like she threw it in there to make Adrienne’s life more complicated and get her to cross paths with Alex.  I liked the addition of her being in a foster home and a found family scenario, instead of clueless parents and having to make the main character have to choose between her biological family and her destiny.  It’s a different approach to this kind of story and it took out the cliché drama, though we still had family drama with her foster siblings.   I wished she had saved the Dixon storyline for book two, because it came off as if I was being thrown into the middle of a conflict.  I loved Hecate as an antagonist, but I wish we had got more of her and maybe we will in book two.  I hope Goeken explores some of the other planes of existence she hints at in this book.   I thought the Immortal was okay but not interesting enough for me.  I like how she includes the spy on the inside, but I wish Goeken had done more with that character.  I definitely plan on continuing as I had a great time with this story and as I said it gave me Buffy feels.