Photo credits: Siala - pixabay Edited by Vaishali Title: On the Rox (Dirty. Tough. Female #1) Author: Kat Addams Genre/Themes: Contemporary Romance, Adult Fiction, Publisher: Self Published. Year of Publication: 2020. ISBN-13: 978-1-7331523-3-4 Format: E-book - kindle app. R E V I E W... ‘Grateful didn’t begin to explain how I’d felt when I saw the world. For two years, I had dined with monks in Scotland, worked a charity for the homeless in Italy, learned life lessons from an eight-year-old orphan in India, and met some of the most amazing and caring people. I found many ravens among the peacocks in the generous spirit of the human race.’ “She’s kintsugi. You’re kintsugi. I don’t care about your brokenness. All I see is gold.” As a lot of readers did, I’m sure, I was hoping for my first 2021 read to be the top-tier, five star token offered to set off a certain bookish temperature, not particularly for the year ahead, but more an odd mix of hopeful thinking and to break my cycle of mid-range ratings. That’s not to say I missed the mark with ‘On the Rox’ by Kat Addams, but I did fall face-first into another read that met me with equal parts withdrawal and the absence of reader/story union. While this didn’t particularly fill me with feeling, it wasn’t a bad read, I just didn’t feel the spark. At all. I tried to dig deep, but while divine interference worked for Jay and Rox, it didn’t for me.. T H E S T O R Y Jaxon ‘Jay’ Taylor has lived a two-year fling trekking the globe. Travelling was energising, a peak time and a wake up call to trade change with loss and line up a lifelong dream to see the world. He did. He wanted to live life differently. Soaked with the lessons of travel and landscape, he’s back in the US to unpack his life, settle down and lay it out with a forever mate to share forever everythings with. If he can find her, that is…he just didn’t expect a loud and proud, outspoken she-posse who rode a pink taco truck to hold his endgame. Jay’s familiar comforts are changing, and while he still hasn’t quite learned the art of living boldly, he’s learned what bold looks like; Raven haired, marked with art and she’s the undying spice that Scarlet Herb’s cuisine may never match. He may be cut from a different cloth, but he’s too keen to be stitched into her life for good. She’s a far cry from his normal, but if normal is plain, undented and very un-Rox-like, he’d settle for a local flavour that tastes like dark-haired divinity. Roxanne ‘Rox’ Corvus and her feisty, female threesome run a thriving street food business with their devil-may-care style and a witty, dauntless flair that has the customers rolling in to taste their hot-on-demand shizzle sauce. Rox is familiar with the pastures she’ll never wet her feet with again, her inked skin re-asserts what once was, but never again. Running into life enables speed and speed eats up the space between then and now, but a few off-chance meetings with an Australian gentleman knocks the breath from her loud lungs, replaced with an ample serving of Jay-specific desire. With a bounce in her heels, a smile in her eyes and sigh in her healing heart, her bad luck twists to good. She’s never quite seen the sweeter side of life, but something tells her Jay is it. T H O U G H T S… Rox: We don’t know to what extent Rox has experienced domestic abuse, it’s an incomplete picture that we aren’t supposed to access, which is why this story doesn’t hold the heavy weight one might presume. The lack of topical heaviness is what makes this an easy-to-read, lightweight story. It’s more about possibility than pain. Rox’s past sits firmly in the background and only briefly from time to time is it even mentioned, though it’s something she’s still healing from. Still trying to accept. From a romantic angle, I understand its purpose. Though it’s only spoken about with the barest of details, I admire the underlying dedication to domestic abuse survivors. This story Is more about what comes after, the success Rox has made, the friends who have her back, how she’s giving back and sharing herself with fellow survivors and how she might feel comfortable trusting herself to satisfy a savoury relationship. I think it’s fitting that Rox’s story stayed with her, that she shared it only to heal others and hadn’t yet invited Jay into that painfully intimate part of her. A survivor's pace is theirs to control, their choice to tell. It’s Rox’s chance to fly free. Only, I didn’t fly free beside her. For me, Rox wasn’t easy to put together as a character. My emotional chemistry with each character in this book was slim at best. Remote enough that I couldn’t strike up any feelings for them. I was oddly surprised, but this distant feeling wasn’t singular to Rox, because I had zero levels of chemistry with any character. Jay: It was refreshing and atypical to have a main lead who inherently lives with a slow pace. I also loved it. Jay is mature, wants a family and isn’t the always-confidant man who has it all together. He’s not the thrill-riding, fast fun type of guy, even if Rox does teach him some thrills. It supports the idea that life is not better lived in the fast line, even if Rox lives it that way. It’s a nice feeling when we get different flavours from the sweet shop. He might not be a sharer, but he seems in touch with his feelings enough. I didn’t feel a strong connect with Jay either but he’s probably the character that I might have felt a tiny something for and it seems that this was development Rox and he needed. Dialogue/Narration: Strangely, the dialogue comes across as dry and more filler-type and replaceable than necessary. I didn’t expect flavourless and flat engagements when this book, at a first impression, emanated flavour. The verbal intercourse between the characters reads more surface-level and also quite repetitive. I really do like a softer, sympathetic hero sometimes, but Jay’s professions are too saccharine and overtly divine. Rox may have been affected by his naughty and nice one-liners but again, I surprisingly wasn’t. As well that, we’ve got too many pieces of dialogue that are punctuated with scores of exclamation marks. Presumably to emphasise tone and energy, but it comes off as artificial and as if the characters really rather enjoy shouting with excitement on every page, in every scene!!! T H E F I N A L ‘On the Rox’ is a role reversal, opposites attract romance, tempering a concoction that’s rily Rox and gentle Jay. As I mentioned, this was an underwhelming read with not a lot to look forward to. It wasn’t the flavoursome romance I had assumed it would be and the anticipation died down rather quickly when the reality became unmistakable. I’ve howled my love for character-heavy stories many a time. A world without people is equal to a story without a decadent population. I could read for characters alone if it came to that, and I can’t engage with a story if I can’t find love with the quirky, spirited, walking hopefuls who bring it to life at the very least. There is nothing particularly bad about 'On the Rox' at all, it just amounted to an endgame that was a middle-of-the-road, prosaic affair. A time of finding laughs and light humour after a drought of sadness for them both, he’s sleepless in outer Forks and she’s smitten for the man down under. He’s wine lists, top-tier cuisine and conservative to his core. She’s tats, tacos and a part of a four part, free-frolicking posse who live with spice. Fine dining and fast chum. Upper-end establishment and a dinosaur branded food-truck. A mismatch of classy and casual, with a divine balance of fraternising on more than just local chow and cosmopolitan cuisine. I gave this book 2.5/3 stars - P O T E N T I A L T R I G G E R W A R N I N G: Swearing, adult content such as sex scenes and other adult situations with the mild, underlying theme of domestic abuse. --------------------------------------- M Y R A T I N G S Y S T E M: ★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read --------------------------------------- Some concerns with the story … 1) Either I’m overlooking details, or we simply aren’t given enough of them in the first place. Backstory and background info helps to fill in the gaps and answer small, but trivial question. It also helps to understand a character. History shapes the present condition, so it’s reasonable to say that it shapes the present character. Sharing history between characters gels a union more than you might realise. Rox and Jay did very little of that and we also don’t know a lot about them with the exception of giving up what the author wants to give up. Perhaps it will come after they’re more settled - I.e. post-story - but it wasn’t lacking for me. 2) One thing I like about reading Is description. It lets me create a visual in my mind. I found it odd that I don’t know what any of the supporting characters looked like, other than one being Afro-american and all them being ‘gorgeous’. I definitely don’t know what Aiden looks like either besides being ‘handsome’. This might sound like a small and irrational point and maybe the author has an explanation for this, but quite a few things about this story are vague, so perhaps I wanted something to be rich with description. I honestly don’t even know who the older brother is, Aiden or Jay and Rox is said to have dark eyes AND blue eyes, and I still don’t know which one it is… 3) I got the feeling the chemistry between Rox and Jay isn’t supposed to be subtle but it is supposed to be relatively tentative (at least in an emotional sense). The chemistry had a speedier physical pace but a slower emotional one. Despite the many times I’m told how odd but divine a bond a they both had, I couldn’t access that chemistry. I also found that the bedroom scenes were very basic and without any real impact. I love interacting with fellow readers, reviewers, bloggers and writers! Hearing about reader opinion is the fuel to my reader appetite, so get in touch and comment below! SHARE ON FACEBOOK L E A V E A C O M M E N T A N D L E T' S T A L K A B O U T |
VaishaliBorn in the UK Archives
February 2024
Categories
All
2019 Reading Challenge
Vaishali • [Vicarious Living] has
read 15 books toward
her goal of
30 books.
hide
2020 Reading Challenge
Vaishali • [Vicarious Living] has
read 1 book toward
her goal of
20 books.
hide
2021 Reading Challenge
Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews] has
read 1 book toward
her goal of
10 books.
hide
2022 Reading Challenge
Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews] has
read 0 books toward
her goal of
5 books.
hide
2023 Reading Challenge
Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews] has
read 0 books toward
her goal of
5 books.
hide
DisclaimerAll images of book covers on this site belong to the authors and publishers of the books.
|