The Gamble

By: Kristen Ashley

Narrated by: Emma Taylor

Length: 25 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

GoodReads Author of the Year 2012, Nominee

Welcome to New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Kristen Ashley's Colorado Mountain Series, where friends become family and everyone deserves a second chance.

Love is the greatest gamble of all...

Nina Sheridan desperately needs a timeout vacation. With a fiancé who can't even remember how she takes her coffee, Nina wants some distance to rethink her engagement. Flying halfway around the world from England to a mountain town in Colorado should do the trick. But when she finds a gorgeous man at her rental cabin, Nina's cold, lonely adventure suddenly heats up.

The owner of the house, Holden "Max" Maxwell is surprised by the beautiful woman who turns up at his door. But when Nina becomes ill, Max spends days nursing her back to health. A private man with a broken heart, Max finds himself drawn to the strong-willed woman. Soon it becomes impossible for Nina and Max to deny their growing attraction to one another. Yet even as these two wounded souls think about taking a chance on a relationship, a secret from Max's past emerges—and threatens to end their love for good.

©2012 Kristen Ashley (P)2014 Hachette Audio

Good read overall

KA always delivers as her stories are always interesting
but some of her signature character sayings are getting old. The heroine always says “ yes, ( insert hero name)” about a million times and the other line was “ I did as I was told “ . Plus, the heroines repeats back the hero’s words back to him ad nauseam.

Perfect Audiobook

Every once in a while, I am lucky enough to find a perfect audio book in which some weird, alchemical mix takes place between writer, narrator and director and the result is a sublime listening experience.
The Gamble is one sublime listen.

It's a love story between headstrong English Nina and headstrong Colorado 'mountain man' Max with a liberal sprinkling of mystery, sex, gossip, sex, humour, intrigue and yet more of Ashley's inimitable sex passages. I almost always skip through sex scenes, but Ashley's sex scenes are so well written and pertinent to her stories, I often listen to them. She is better at capturing the mood, motivations and action of a sexual scene- be it playful or intense or just plain in the establishment of intimacy- than any of the great 'erotic writers' (NO- not EL James- think Nin and Miller).

The Gamble is a big, rollicking and engaging story with a vast cast of characters all told in first person by Brit Nina. Narrator Emma Taylor's performance is astounding, switching seamlessly between broad Colorado dialog and English dialects. (here, I ought to tell you that Nina's English dialect is a little Ronald Coleman-ish; a sort of American version of an upper class English dialect that took some getting used to for me who, like Nina holds both passports, but is still a monumental achievement in it's flawlessness).

I've listened to a couple of Kristen Ashley books and quite enjoyed them. Tired of the current glut of torture porn, which I keep returning to Audible (honestly, why don't they label that crap?), I thought, 'well, Ashley's safe' and bought The Gamble. I expected to enjoy it, but I never expected it to be as immersive and wonderful an experience as Outlander.*
Yes, it's that good.




*okay, okay fine: there is extreme torture in Outlander and other great books (American Psycho, the Collector) - and some violence in this- but it's not their raison d'etre.

Fast Becoming my Favourite Author

I loved this book from start to finish. Made me cry several times. Can't really give more endorsement than that can I?

Holy Cow!!!! What a book

I LOVED this book. Such a surprise to find it. I never considered reading erotica because I was worried the storyline would be too torturous. This should have been under contemporary romance and not erotica. The first sex scene happened halfway through the book, but don't get me wrong, you won't miss it because the story is so engaging.
What I thought as I read the book was WOW. This story is so full of action (things happening constantly) that it seemed like it actually happened because none can come up with such a complicated storyline. None of it was forced and the very well developed characters were so real you can't help but to love them all. Even the "bad guys" were people you felt for. AaaaaaaMA*****ZING. Trust me when I say you will not go wrong with this book if you like contemporary romance. Sex is sprinkled in there but by no means overpowering the story. Just the right amount. Now my only question is why can we not find real guys like this? Oh well. We can all dream at least :)

Love Kristen Ashley!

I discovered Kristen Ashley this year and have enjoyed all of her books. They are witty, funny, and full of action. Just enough romance and some hot scenes in bed. You have to like the "alpha" man type character, but the women are strong characters too. By way of the audiobook and Emma Taylor's performance. She's fantastic. She switches accents flawlessly and does a great job differentiating between the characters. I really enjoyed the audiobook and am looking forward to the next one in the series, Sweet Dreams.

Worth the gamble...

I usually go for books that are about 10 hours long. So I considered whether it would be a good idea to try a 25, yes 25 hour long book by an author I've never read before. It was a gamble, a gamble I won. I LOVED this story. Even though the story is long many twists and unexpected turns made you want more. The love story between Nina and Max is very well developed, emotional and passionate. On top of that the ending is so amazing I felt like giving the author a standing ovation. Beautiful story and so worth a credit.

Narration: the narrator adds to the story. Her British accent is very good and she does excellent distinct male voices. I'd listen to more books narrated by Emma Taylor.

25 Hours Of Fantastic Romance/Adventure? Delivered

What made the experience of listening to The Gamble the most enjoyable?

*25 Hours Of Fantastic Romance/Adventure? I didn't think it would be possible to keep my attention this long. Happily, I was wrong, this book delivered every minute full of adventure romance and mystery- a job well done.

While the beginning premise was a bit cheesy (nor original.) It quickly drew me in with the sexy scenes and meeting all of the new characters.
I can't wait for the rest of the series.

A few instances of 'high school dreaminess' (all the cliches) weren't necessary. This seems to be very strong and I really enjoyed the mystery adventure portion of it as well as the romance side

Which character – as performed by Emma Taylor – was your favorite?

I think the female lead, Nina, was the best performed by Emma Taylor although she was great with male voices as well.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I do not have first extreme reactions to books -they're books- I did enjoy this one and looked forward to the next in the series.

Any additional comments?

I got this on sale for $5.95. As soon as I finished I got the next 3 books in the series!
DEFINITELY creditworthy, in my opinion.

Note: Strong language, graphic descriptions of sex, some violence.

If you found my review helpful please select phones at the bottom of this page

New series to love!

I thought I loved Kristen's writing after listening to the entire Rock Chic series, love her ten fold now! I am so hooked on this woman's writings and her narrators keep my emotions up as well. So happy I found her!

Loved it.

This was a great listen. It kept me interested and involved the whole time! Yes it's a 20 something hour book but I seriously didn't want it to end! Only thing that threw me off in the beginning was the various times the f bomb was used by one of the main characters. I normally don't like books with unessasary use of bad language ,but at the end, the book and storyline, was good enough that I was able to get past it.

THIS IS A WINNER !!!!!

Would you listen to The Gamble again? Why?

OH YES!!! This is a fantastic audio book!!!! It is long but you don't even realize how long it is because you are so into the book and waiting to see what happens. It has EVERYTHING!!! Romance, love, mystery, suspense, hot scenes..... Laugh! Cry! Scream! Bite your nails and laugh some more and then you get the AWWWWW factor! It is so good you just want to tell someone.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Gamble?

There are so many memorable moments and I don't like spoilers so I will just say .... Jeff and Mindy, Max and Nina, the bar scenes, Cotton, when she calls for a taxi .... too many to say

Which scene was your favorite?

Like I said - I don't like spoilers but probably when Nina is drunk and confronts Max's ex -girlfriend and Sister in the bar when they are having dinner with Mindy and Brody.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes- Jeff talks with Mindy... very touching and when Max's wife speaks to him at the end...OMG!!

Any additional comments?

Yes, this book is long...Yes this book has a lot of f bombs.... Yes, this book has a lot of details but OMG !!!! It is a GREAT listen and the Narrator is AWESOME!!!! The story line is GREAT!! I can not say enough about this book! You like romance, hot scenes, laughing out loud, suspense and just the feeling of WOW!! that was a good book!!!! Then this is a audio for you!!!!