Finding the One (River Rain 7) by Kristen Ashley-review tour
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date September 9, 2025
Their parents being family friends, American/English aristocrat, Blake Sharp, and Scottish playboy Alasdair Wallace were thrust together all through their childhoods.
Blake thought Dair was a filthy, obnoxious, little boy bully.
Dair thought Blake was a spoiled, prissy wee miss.
Then Blake grew up to be a beautiful, loving woman who took care of everyone and made amazing pistachio muffins. And Dair grew up to be a protective, fun-loving, hard-living professional rugby player.
In the meantime, they’d both been deeply betrayed by lovers.
When their paths cross again, Blake is still reeling from her fiancé’s treachery and what she learned about herself during it.
Dair thinks he’s recovered from a marriage to a woman who was not at all what she seemed, and now he’s smitten by the woman Blake has become.
So smitten, he has every intention of exploring what they can grow to be together.
But their combined family history is filled with secrets and lies. Secrets and lies that explode in their faces.
And while they deal with that, ghosts from the past rise up and threaten to haunt their future.
Is what they built together strong enough to hold true?
Or will their personal demons tear them apart?
•••••••
REVIEW: FINDING THE ONE is the seventh instalment in Kristen Ashley’s contemporary, adult RIVER RAIN erotic, romance series. This is thirty-seven year old, former Scottish rugby player Alisdair ‘Dair’ Wallace, and thirty-four year old, aristocrat Blake Sharp’s story line. FINDING THE ONE can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story lines is revealed where necessary.
Told from first person (Blake) and omniscient third person (Dair) FINDING THE ONE follows the building but acrimonious relationship between our story line couple. Dair Wallace and Blake Sharp’s families have been friends most of their lives but Blake has struggled for years in the wake of her mother’s behavior both public and private, and Blake has lashed out whenever and wherever possible. At her sister Alex’s wedding to Rix Hendrix (Taking the Leap 3) , a not-so-secret family affair will be revealed, and Blake finds herself struggling with the impending fall-out. With the help of Dair Wallace, who himself, is spiralling with the his own dysfunctional family unit, Blake must come to terms with what is happening and why, and in the ensuing days and weeks, find themselves falling for one another but family secrets reveal a different side to our story line heroine, and Blake must face the future alone.
The world building focuses on the fall-out of infidelity, and the twisted and warping family values. Two dysfunctional families must face the reality of what has happened and why, and acknowledge the cost of betrayal to everyone involved.
The relationship between Dair and Blake has been tempestuous at best. Dair has seen Blake at her worst, or so he thought; and Blake struggles with years of vengeance at the cost of her family and friends. Dair is determined to prove Blake is worthy of her own happily ever after but the past returns, and our heroine finds herself going it alone. The $ex scenes are intimate and provocative.
There is a large ensemble cast of colorful, questionable and broken secondary and supporting characters including both Dair and Blake’s immediate families. We are reintroduce to several couples we met in the previous instalments as well as Blake’s besties The G-force.
FINDING THE ONE is a story of secrets and lies, betrayal and vengeance, dysfunctional family struggles, forgiveness and acceptance, friendships and love. The character driven premise is heart breaking, edgy and dramatic; the romance is seductive and fated; the characters are emotional, charismatic and determined.
Reading Order and Previous reviews
After the Climb
Chasing Serenity
Taking the Leap
Making the Match
Fighting the Pull
Embracing the Change
Copy supplied for review
Reviewed by Sandy
I turned at my mother’s voice.
“They’re an important family,” Mum went on when I caught her gaze. “And he’s the heir.”
This was so Mum.
Thus, of course, I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Blake Charlotte Sharp,” Mum snapped.
“Alasdair Wallace is a bully,” I snapped back and looked across the bar at the man in question.
He was standing with the groom-to-be (tomorrow) Rix and Rix’s best friend, Judge.
They looked like a craft beer advertisement.
A very successful one where every man who saw it would want to be them and therefore run right out and buy that beer. Whereupon they’d drink it and think the next day, even after they’d over imbibed, they’d be prepared go on a ten-mile hike that included a bracing swim in a snow-fed lake, get home and still have enough energy to mow the lawn and fuck their woman.
Blech.
Some women might think Dair Wallace was sinfully attractive.
I was not one of those women.
Okay, so he had thick, dark hair and rugged outdoorsman features hewn from centuries of his ancestors being, well…rugged outdoorsmen (along with rebels, warriors and pains in the asses of any English ruler that came along). He was tall and built like a rugby player (because he played rugby).
All my life, when we’d go to England for our visits to Mum, for a week during their summer holidays, the Wallaces would come down from their sprawling estate in Scotland to visit us in her townhome in London, or our family’s country seat in Somerset, or worst of this lot, we’d go up north and visit them.
Dair Wallace was the epitome of “oh, he’s pulling your hair and teasing you relentlessly because he likes you,” when everyone knew that wasn’t the case.
No, it was because little boys like that were assholes who weren’t taught better.
And Mum was the kind of woman who gave little boys like that as much leeway as possible, because that “was the way of her world, but also because his daddy was rich.
And because she was fucking him.
Dair’s daddy that was.
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Kristen Ashley was born in Gary, Indiana, USA. She 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 accessorise and she hadn’t taken her first breath!).
Kristen grew up in Brownsburg, Indiana but has lived in Denver, Colorado and the West Country of England. Thus she has been blessed to have friends and family around the globe. Her posse is loopy (to say the least) but loopy is good when you want to write.
Kristen was raised in a house with a large and multi-generational family. They lived on a very small farm in a small town in the heartland and existed amongst the strains of Glenn Miller, The Everly Brothers, REO Speedwagon and Whitesnake (and the wardrobes that matched).
Needless to say, growing up in a house full of music, clothes and love was a good way to grow up.
And as she keeps growing up, it keeps getting better.
