DREAM MAKER
Series: Dream Team #1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Kristen Ashley
Release Date: May 26, 2020
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Dream Man and Rock Chick series comes a brand new story about love, friendship, and the bonds of sisterhood.
Evie is a bonafide nerd and a hyper-intelligent chick who has worked her whole life to get what she wants. Growing up, she had no support from her family and has only ever been able to rely on herself. So when Evie decides she wants to earn her engineering degree, she realizes she needs to take an alternative path to get there. She takes a job dancing at Smithie’s club thinking this would be a quick side gig, where she can make the money she needs. But with her lack of dancing skills and an alpha bad boy who becomes overly protective, Evie realizes this might not be as easy as she thought.
Daniel “Mag” Magnusson knows a thing or two about pain, but the mask he wears is excellent. No one can tell that this good-looking, quick-witted, and roguish guy has deep-seated issues. Mag puts on a funny-guy routine so he can hide his broken heart and PTSD. But when Evie dances her way into Mag’s life, he realizes that he needs to come face-to-face with the demons of his past if he wants a future with her.
All my life, you know?”
“All your life what, baby?”
“Until you.”
He curved both arms around me and his voice was growly when he asked, “Until me, what?”
“The people I loved made loving them hard. Until you.”
*giddy wiggle*
Hey! Pssst! You there! You listening to this? Because this cynic just read a KA book and loved it! No but seriously. Guys. I seriously got my KA mojo back with this book and I’m so thrilled because now I’m also seriously hooked on this series!
So here’s the tea. It had the following:
1. A heroine that’s dorky, somewhat a klutz, but beautiful with hair up to THERE and curves in the right places.
2. A hero that can probably hold a conversation using only “yeah”, “babe”, and grunts
3. A heroine that’s down on her luck but has a vagina spun from gold because everyone and I mean EVERYONE falls for her. Even the bad guys.
4. A lot of action
5. Plenty of secondary characters hilarious antics, including a cross over with Rock Chicks and Dream Man.
6. A ‘comando’ hero
7. Hot shmexy loving
8. A new cast of characters in the form of gorgeous but down on their luck women who turn to stripping but the strip club owner is THE BEST
9. Male characters that will never pronounce a hard consonant at the end of their words.
10. Girlfriends that get into crazy situations but stay tight through all of it.
And this girl is giddy with excitement!!! Why? Because this is the vintage KA I love and missed.
Now look, if you’ve read ANY KA book in the past, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It may sound crazy to any who haven’t read her, but for me, this tried and true formula of hers just does it for me. And if the chemistry is there for the MCs, then I’m putty in your hands.
Evie and Danny were so good together. Their chemistry was undeniable. And what I really loved was that the action kept going well beyond the 50% mark of the book. In the last few KA books, I’ve admittedly grown bored by the halfway mark and felt like the rest was filler, but not here. There was a lot of book here, and all of it was GOOD.
It’s not everyday you meet a cast of strippers that you just absolutely fall in love with and are dying to read their stories. And can we just talk about the set up for the second book? Because GAH! But let me not get ahead of myself here and focus on this one.
Evie was fantastic. Of course everyone, their mother, and their uncle Harry loved her. But she’s impossible not to love. Except, unfortunately for some deadbeat members of her family that get her in life threatening danger.
Danny is a guy she gets set up on a date with by her friend and coworker, and they have instant sparks. And of course when he finds out she’s in danger, he immediately moves her in with him and will move heaven and earth to protect her. And this girl gobbled it right up.
Yes, it’s a tried and true formula but with a cast of new faces, and it just worked, you guy. It worked so well. This was like a combination of Rock Chicks and Dream Man and it was delicious! I was immediately hooked and I’m already desperate for more!
ROUGH RIDE
It’s been a while since I reached for a KA fix. Truth be told, the last two releases were a very sad DNF for me that left me questioning if I’d finally reached a point where I had to admit defeat with one of my previously favorite authors. But I love The Chaos series, and I simply couldn’t help but one-click this book to see if I’ll finally get a bit of those KA feels back. It’s just been too long since I felt them!
But mostly confused.
THE TIME IN BETWEEN 
Kristen Ashley was born in Gary, Indiana, USA and nearly killed her mother and herself making it into the world, seeing as she had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck (already attempting to accessorize and she hadn’t taken her first breath!). Her mother said they took Kristen away, put her Mom back in her room, her mother looked out the window, and Gary was on fire (Dr. King had been assassinated four days before). Kristen’s Mom remembered thinking it was the end of the world. Quite the dramatic beginning.
THE DEEP END
Kristen Ashley. The Queen. The Goddess. The Castle-Builder.
Kristen Ashley was born in Gary, Indiana, USA and nearly killed her mother and herself making it into the world, seeing as she had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck (already attempting to accessorize and she hadn’t taken her first breath!). Her mother said they took Kristen away, put her Mom back in her room, her mother looked out the window, and Gary was on fire (Dr. King had been assassinated four days before). Kristen’s Mom remembered thinking it was the end of the world. Quite the dramatic beginning.
MIDNIGHT SOUL
But there was a reason I carried a midnight soul, for the evil contained in both my parents set their souls to cinders years ago. It was not a wonder I’d inherited the blackness.
What a bittersweet book this was for me to read. Midnight Soul marks the conclusion of one of my favorite Kristen Ashley series. After all, it’s the series that brought me 
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Nick Sebring. *pause for dirty thoughts* After first meeting him as Knight’s younger brother with a slew of issues in 
I loved everything about this book; the set up, the characters, the romance. Olivia is a heroine that’s impossible not to love. The things she’s been through, and finding out the true depth of them, you begin to yearn for her HEA just as much as she does. And as for Nick? *swoon*
It’s been a long while since I’ve read a book that touched me on such a visceral level. I don’t cry in books. Maybe I have a cold black heart, maybe I don’t have a soul, I dunno, it just doesn’t happen mkay. But here? I was a mess. A wreck. Absolutely and utterly pathetic. Sniveling, ugly crying, uncontrollably emotional wreck. In case you’re still not with me, basically I spent the first half of this book in this particular state:
My husband came home from work and caught me reading it, and after taking in my ugly crying state freaked out thinking someone died. True story. Basically, the moral of this story is do NOT read this book in public unless you want people to think there’s something seriously wrong with you. This book will tug at every heart string you have and rip it to smithereens. I’m not even kidding. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I though it was just a fluke at first, so I went back to re-read a few key parts and nope! I was a wreck all over again.
That gif basically sums up my feelings for High and the rest of Chaos for the first half of this book. High is a royal asshole to Millie when he sees her again. She broke his heart all those years ago and he’s not about to let her forget it. She walked out on him and Chaos, and now that she seems to want the chance to explain, he’ll use the opportunity to switch the roles from twenty years ago.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t like Millie when I originally read the first chapter of this book as a preview in 
It happens. For people like us, baby. It happens, eventually. Just as long as we hold on.
What an incredibly bittersweet book this was for me to read. I first discovered this amazing series back in 2012 when I read 
You know how I was sure I had a 5 star read on my hands? I didn’t skim even one page. Not. A. One. Not any of the descriptions of the clothes, the furniture, the rooms, the clouds in the sky, nothing. I was enthralled in the characters and their romance from beginning to end and absolutely devoured every page.
