Blood and Ash by Deborah Wilde was a delightful discovery. Thanks to Netgalley for the audiobook. This book made me think of if you took Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series and combined it with Wynonna Earp you would have Ash. She is a smart and sexy private detective with the mouth of a sailor. Her sense of humor and quips made me burst out giggling throughout the book. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to future ones.

This was my first novel from Deborah Wilde. The description promised a fun supernatural PI with some hot romance and this book totally delivered! I really enjoyed this first in the series and ran out to get the next one so that I wouldn't have to say goodbye to Ash and her friends. There are plenty of reasons to enjoy this book. A fun and interesting heroine, a will-they won't-they romance, a well-woven storyline and fully realized world. The characters were fun and didn't feel like they were a pale rehashing of others I had met before. I also really enjoyed the author's use of a existing Jewish folklore and the call outs to more modern references like Alice in Wonderland and Scooby-Doo. This was a quick read as well, so you can devour this fun book in an evening - if you start early or stay up all night. I also listened to this novel. The narrator did a great job bringing each character to life. I would say there were portions where it was difficult to discern inner monologue for external dialogue which made short spurts of the novel harder to follow. This was a slight ding, but it wasn't anything that really put me off finishing the novel. Run out and pick it up! #BloodAshTheJezebelFiles1 #NetGalley

I probably would have enjoyed this book more if I had read it myself. There was a tinny mechanical quality to the narrator's voice that I found almost unbearable. Now, it is possible that this had nothing to do with her voice, and could be the fault of my phone or the app, but my review is a little skewed because of sound quality.

As for the story, I thought this was a fun read. I love the main character and how sassy she is, and she is surrounded by other equally as fun characters. It was hard to follow along at first because it almost felt like I was reading a sequel. The book drops you right into the story, and it was hard to figure out what was going on. Once things cleared up, it became more enjoyable.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me listen to this one!

Thank you Te Da Media and Netgalley for a copy of Blood & Ash audio book in exchange for an honest review.
Ashira Cohen is the only woman PI in Vancouver, and she is about to get even more unique. With Jewish lore, super powers and amazing sexual tension between (sort of) enemies to lovers, this book has it all. From laugh out loud to action from start to finish, I immediately looked for the next book in the series and read through them all.

Ashira Cohen lives in a world where part of the populace is magically adept. Trying to make it as a mundane detective, where the jobs make less money and are less exciting, Ash attempts to make the best of it. During a case, a head injury puts her on a path she never thought possible.

I was ecstatic when I discovered NetGalley is now giving out audiobook arcs, which is my preferred method of reading. A narrator can make or break the audiobook journey, and this was a good one. Hollie Jackson does a good job narrating Blood and Ash: The Jezebel Files, Book One. I never felt her interpretation was disingenuous to the characters. I was able to simply kick back, listen, and lose myself in Ash's world.

Blood and Ash by Deborah Wilde is my kind of book. I'll be honest you will find elements in this story that exist in a lot of other urban fantasy/ paranormal romances. But that did not make it any less enjoyable for me. The supernatural had enough of a uniqueness that I was not comparing constantly to stories from my past. I was engaged and interested in the magical world Ash lives in.

Ash is sassy, amusing, and tough. Her complicated relationship with her mother drew me in as does the one with her childhood "nemesis" Levi. Love stories derived from a couple who think they despise each other are most interesting to me. The conflict in the chase always amps up the passion, and Ash and Levi have it in abundance.

In short, Blood and Ash is excellent and well worth listening to the audiobook. After finishing, I immediately started book two, Death and Desire, and now wait impatiently for the audio of book three, Shadows and Surrender.

This is a review of the audiobook of Blood and Ash by Deborah Wilde, narrated by Hollie Jackson.

Blood & Ash (The Jezebel Files #1) is the first book in a fun, quirky snarky series that is a hybrid of fantasy/sci-fi/detective and mystery.

Ashira is a private investigator in Vancouver in a world that is divided between magical and non magical people. Ashira does not have magic either until an attack causes her to discover powers of her own. Now she must join with her nemesis, Levi, to solve a spree of abductions.

The back and forth sarcasm between the characters is enjoyable and the world building is unique.

The narration by Hollie Jackson is fun, with just the right level of snark and sarcasm, and sets the perfect tone for this series.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publishers and Netgalley. My review is voluntary.

I'll be honest, even after finishing it I don't have a strong feeling about this book. While it certainly delivers on the "snarky" part of a Snarky Detective Series I couldn't connect to the characters because of it. They felt like characatures rather than fleshed out characters. I appreciate the diversity in the book with Jewish main characters and an Indian woman as a secondary characters. However the relationship between Ash and Levi felt flat to me. I also found myself feeling like I was missing something. The book jumps right in to Ash's life and I could have done with a little more world building more quickly. Ash's snark was amusing, but the book won't be one that I'll find myself re-visiting over and over.

Thank you to Netgalley for my audio review copy.

This book was hilarious and satisfying. Reminded me of The Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. Narration was impeccable.

Cannot recommend enough!

Love it!

Blood & Ash is a great start to a new paranormal series. I love a snarky PI, and Ash delivers. Her best friend Priya, the consummate hacker, is a great sounding board, and Levi, the super-hot boy next door who is now a multi billionaire is a great antagonist.

I found this book closer to Stephanie Plum than Kate Daniels, which works for me. It does not take itself seriously, and the breakneck speed of the plot carries the reader along.

The audio narrator, Hollie Jackson, is an excellent fit for this series with her dry tone and great male voices.

Looking forward to the next one!

I was lent an ARC of the audiobook version of this book for review purposes from Netgalley.

Great Urban Fantasy series to start.

Ash has just learned she can do magic. She's snarky and sassy and I just love that about her. She runs around trying to find out how she got this magic. The story is fast paced and leaves you wanting to keep reading to see what is going to happen next. I like books where the magic is different and this book gave me just that!

The book lost me with the religious talk. I understand it's place in explaining her name and some other story plots, but it's just something that never holds interest for me in any book. Thankfully its not so much that it took away from the story as a whole for me.

Hollie Jackson did an excellent job narrating the story and portraying the different characters. Loved when she spoke Spanish!!

Thanks to NetGalley and Deborah Wilde for providing me an audio copy for an honest review.

Audiobooks take me a lot longer to read than ebooks or print novels, but this felt very much worth the wait. I enjoy the take of magical vs. nonmagical people and the divisions in this world. I was definitely drawn into the mysteries dogging our intrepid investigator, the magic skill she suddenly had, and the missing teen she was trying to find. The classification of a Jezebel is explained late in this novel, but explains why the entire series is called the Jezebel Files.

I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and how they had their witty banter. The narrator does a great job with differing voices and accents, and really infusing each character with a life of their own.

I was not expecting much from this book but I really loved it. Ash is a strong female and I appreciate that in a main character. I hope that when it is published, the cover is a bit cooler because I would have never picked this up as is. It would be a huge miss because it's a really great book.

This book had me going on extra long walks with my baby just so I could listen to more of it. It was funny, Canadian, had a strong female lead and was snarky as promised.
I really enjoyed the authors’ take on this world with some magic. I’m excited for the second book in the series. I’m completely sucked in and need to know where the storyline goes.

The narrator wasn't that bad so I had a hard time between yes I liked or no I didn't. I ultimately chose didn't like because the voice I disliked the most was the one she used for the main character. Ash is mouthy so I heard it a lot and found it irritating and grating. For that reason i would not get this series in audio.

A moderate like.
I received copies of this book from Netgalley in both ebook and audiobook form. Sometimes the audio version demonstrates how weak a story is (one of Heather Graham's novels) is or can actually make it better Harris' Midnight, Texas series). In this case they were both a decent experience. Wilde's story was interesting enough that I immediately got book 2, Death and Desire, from Kindle Unlimited. She tweaks the UF world building and gives me the first Jewish, albeit non-practicing, UF main character. The ones I've read have been either pagan, Christian or non-believers of any sort. **Added, I'm wrong, I also read the first book in her Nava Katz series which I did not like and also features a Jewish main character.**

My one issue is some over the top, in your face elements, like the dildo mentioning more than once type thing. In the audio book, I found the narrator, probably a good choice for the main character cause she was really live, almost manic at times. However, her voice as was a bit grating, and less noticeable as other characters.

If it was good enough for me to seek out book 2 it's a like review. After listening to the audio book more recently, I'm not sure I'm that excited to read books 3 and 4. So, it's a marginal like, maybe 3.5/5.

I really enjoyed this audio book and the narrator did a fantastic job! This is an urban mystery with a big dash of Science Fiction. Ash the main character is very complex and interesting. She has a smart mouth on her and an attitude to match. Ash is an independent and headstrong woman who fights for what she thinks is right. I really enjoyed her back handed comments. This is the first book in what I hope to a long series. The main players and plot lines were introduced, I want to see where they lead. There was even a steamy twist toward the end, I cant wait to see how it develops.

Heat Factor: This is some drawn out will they/won’t they business
Character Chemistry: I want them together soooooooooooo badly
Plot: It’s super involved: abductions and political machinations and self-discovery and mysteries to solve
Overall: So it was super fun, but also I do not want to have this relationship business dragged out for four books

This book is one I guess I passed on when it was an e-galley, but now, because it was an audiobook galley, I grabbed it. I’m really glad I did...with caveats. Actually just one caveat. It’s not really a romance. Everything that should have been present for a romance was there...but there’s really not even a HFN in this relationship. I’m struggling with this a little bit, because I really want Levi and Ash together, but I really do not like to be yanked around for books on end a la Stephanie Plum. But also the book takes place over the course of days, so is it even reasonable that childhood nemeses would get over whatever relationship baggage they have in that time? Probably not in real life, but I WANT MY ROMANCE, AND I DIDN’T GET IT. But the tension between Levi and Ash was LIT. So I’ll probably read the whole dang series just because I want that romance. Well played, Wilde. Well played.

Anyway, if you’re just here for the romance, you’ll probably want to take a pass.

BUT if you’re here for the urban fantasy, this was delightful. If Wilde is a new to you author, I’m thinking if you’re an Illona Andrews fan, this series would be right up your alley.

Ashira Cohen, or Ash, is a private investigator who tries to mind her own business, except that she’s been frenemies with the current head of the Magic House of all of Western Canada since childhood. So of course they antagonize each other. Levi also takes his role as the head of his house very seriously, so when Ash bangs her head and can suddenly use magic, he books her for being a rogue magic user.

Then things start to heat up when, as they’re interrogating her, Ash prevents a “Smudge” (the book’s mysterious Bad Thing) from killing Levi’s best friend (and her own childhood frenemy-by-extension). Because her previously unknown magic is the only thing that can see or destroy the Smudges, Levi decides to bend the rules by making the paperwork for processing her magic get super bogged down, and he hires her to prevent Smudges from wreaking havoc in Vancouver, which would give the anti-magic, racist political party - led by Ash’s mother - fuel for passing anti-magic legislation.

Okay, so you can see here that I’m trying to summarize in a big way, and there’s a lot going on. Right? The voice is Ash’s 1st person POV, so it’s a little bit edgy and sassy, which is really fun, especially when she gets into scrapes. Of which there are many, from accidentally conjuring a dildo at a fancy fundraiser to arguing with the criminal underground’s Queen of Hearts and her White Rabbit to fighting a room full of golems. Wilde also populates the narrative with numerous pop culture references, from Alice in Wonderland (which comes up before we meet the White Rabbit, so that full circle situation was fun) to Harry Potter to 90s rap and so on. Ash was inspired by Sherlock Holmes, so Holmes and all his relationships come up frequently, from her unreliable car being named Moriarty to her nickname for her best friend being Adler.

The other fun thing about this book is that it’s steeped in Jewish culture and folklore (please see golems above). In this world, magic appeared when ten men purported to be descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, decided to be lazy about practicing Kabbalah, so they decided to skip steps to reach the highest plane of the soul, and magic was born! But it didn’t just impact the ten men, it accidentally spread through the whole world. Whoops! It was nice to have a story not centered in a Western Protestant worldview.

Because this was an audiobook (which I’ll remind us all that I listen to at 1.5x because listening at 1x sounds like people talking under water), a note on the narration: it was great. Hollie Jackson was the narrator, and she executes the 1st person POV exceptionally well, bringing to live all the vibrancy and sass that is Ash. A good narration totally makes an audiobook, and Jackson was definitely part of the hook for me.

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

This review is also available at The Smut Report.

I decided to listen to this on a whim because I am also a fan of Sherlock Holmes.
I really enjoyed the plot and the characters. Levi is probably my favorite with Miles as a close second.
Overall, I gave this a 3.75 (rounded up to a 4) because it kept my attention and I actually completed this in one day.
The only issue I had was that even though the characters were supposed to be in their late twenties, I kept forgetting that fact. It felt more like they were in their late teens/their early twenties. They just seemed a little immature to me.
I still really enjoyed this first book!
After finishing this, I immediately got the second and third in this series and am still loving it.

I have always liked a series with a female main character who has a bit of snark and a lot of logic. Ashira Cohen does her best to deliver. At first the narration style is kind of manic, so listener beware. As that is the way that Ash mulls through a problem it quickly becomes easier to manage.
Ash is a mundane private detective. she investigates the gambit from cheating husbands to lost pets. As a non-magical person she is not allowed by law to investigate those with magical ability. What should be a routine investigation for a worried parent becomes something else entirely.
After this "routine" job goes sideways, Ash has to go to the hospital and soon discovers that she has a Star of David tattoo on the back of her head underneath her hairline. Not something that she would be particularly partial to, and positive that she didn't get it in a drunken trip to the tattoo parlor, the mystery of this mystical tattoo soon manifests into her magical side.
This book is partially Ash's journey into trying to figure out what is going on and partially a very serious investigation.
Side characters are strong and well fleshed out, and there is a potential love interest.

The narration is a little unbalancing at first, but Hollie Jackson does a good job of creating distinct voices and they are easy to discern.

All in all I would give this book 4 out of 5 stars and will look forward to the next book in this Jezebel Files series.

Wilde did a good job with setting up her world. It’s almost an alternate-Earth, where magic has been present for hundreds of years and everyone knows of its existence. But we get the actual origin story of the magic, which is actually really cool, and the magic itself is well explained. Each character’s childhood/adolescent desires influences what type of magic they have, so you can learn a lot about someone by simply knowing their magic.

I loved Levi! He was an interesting character and his reactions all seemed really genuine. I really want to know more about him. I didn’t love where his and Ash’s relationship was at the end of this book though. Their moments together just seemed to come out of the blue, especially since nothing has happened between them in the fifteen years they have known each other. So the ending just didn’t seem like the right choice for their relationship arc.

I think that readers will love Ash’s snark. For me, Ash’s snark was over the top. Some of her sarcastic thoughts/comments just came across as annoying and whiny. Ash is also pretty immature. She’s supposed to be 28, but most of the time she sounds like she’s about 15.

I also listened to the audio version, but I recommend reading this book. I’ve listened to this narrator before and I have a hard time enjoying her voice.

I enjoyed this book, laughed out loud several times while listening to it on audio but I couldn't stop drawing parallels between this book and the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones. Not that, that is a bad thing. I absolutely love that series but this was very similar to that. The romance is kind of minimal in this first book, just a few encounters. The mystery is a much larger part. All in all I did like this book and would probably read on in the series.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a free audiobook for review.