A Brilliant Premise That Never Reached Its Potential
When I read the blurb for Ember and Ash by Lisa Renee Jones, I was immediately sold. A criminal defense attorney whose life is turned upside down after discovering that one of her seemingly innocent clients is actually guilty through supernatural visions? Add angels, demons, ancient secrets, and an urban fantasy
Fantasy ist ein Teilbereich der Phantastik und leitet sich v... More setting, and it sounded like a book that had my name written all over it. It’s exactly why I requested an ARC through NetGalley.
Through NetGalley I received an advance review copy (ARC) for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Ember and Ash by Lisa Renee Jones
Series: Thorne Saga #1
Genre
Der Begriff Genre bezeichnet eine Kategorie oder Gattung von... More: Adult, Angels, Contemporary Fiction, Demons, Paranormal, Romance, Urban Fantasy Published on 27. Aug 2026 by Independently Published
Pages: 471
Format: ARC, Kindle Edition
ASIN: B0FN1WWXVF
Language: English
Source: NetGalley
Link to Goodreads
My rating: | Spice:
In the dark of the night, there is passion and destruction…
Criminal defense attorney Ember Thorne thought the biggest challenge of her life would be her quest to navigate the justice system on behalf of the wrongly accused. That is, until she finds herself in the sights of an otherworldly evil, desperately hunting what she cannot kill, not yet, at least. Nothing in her life, or in this world, is what it seems, and when a blue-eyed stranger named Micah saves her life, their attraction is the fire that could become the death of all that exists or the salvation that blooms with new hope for all. Micah, royalty in his own right, will challenge her to stand against evil, but when you have never known true evil, can you really recognize it where it hides?
In a world where angels and demons are the truth humans call fiction, could it be a lie between lovers that equals salvation? Or is that lie the blade that delivers devastation?
Ember and Ash, the first book in the Thorne Saga, introduces you to a world filled with the magic of angels and the darkness of the monsters they hunt, where secrets and lies, and a passionate forbidden romance hold world-altering consequences.
Buy here: Amazon*
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Ember and Ash ♦ Lisa Renee Jones
A Review
Opinion
For the first five to ten chapters, I genuinely thought I had found a new series I was going to love.
Ember Thorne is a 27-year-old criminal defense attorney who has built her life around facts, evidence, and logic. After successfully defending a man accused of multiple murders, everything changes when she shakes his hand and is suddenly confronted with vivid visions proving he really is the killer. From there, her carefully ordered world begins to crumble. She starts seeing things she can’t explain, feels hunted by something lurking in the shadows, and slowly realizes that the world is far stranger than she ever imagined. When Micah appears and saves her from creatures she didn’t even know existed, the story seems ready to open the door to an exciting supernatural mystery.
Honestly, this opening was fantastic.
I loved that Ember didn’t immediately accept everything she experienced as truth. She questioned herself. She searched for rational explanations. She genuinely believed she might be losing her mind before she even considered that the impossible could actually be real. That made her feel authentic, intelligent, and refreshingly grounded. I was completely invested in following her down that rabbit hole.
Sadly, that’s also where the novel peaked for me.
The moment Micah entered the picture, I felt as though the story shifted its focus far too quickly. Instead of letting the mystery breathe, Ember‘s thoughts increasingly revolved around him. Yes, the author explains their attraction as something intensified by danger and extraordinary circumstances, but it never felt earned. I wasn’t shown two people slowly building trust or developing genuine chemistry. Instead, I was repeatedly told there was this overwhelming connection between them, while I simply couldn’t feel it myself.
And then there’s Micah. Without exaggeration, he became the single biggest reason I struggled with this book.
I understand that a first installment can’t reveal every secret. In fact, I don’t want it to. A good fantasyFantasy ist ein Teilbereich der Phantastik und leitet sich v... More series should leave readers asking questions. But Micah doesn’t create mystery. He creates frustration. Nearly every conversation follows the same pattern: Ember asks a perfectly reasonable question, Micah refuses to answer, tells her she’ll understand later, or expects her to blindly trust him without giving her even the smallest piece of information. It stopped feeling mysterious very early on and instead became repetitive. After a while, every scene with him made me sigh because I already knew exactly how it would play out.
The romance suffered because of this as well. I never truly believed in Ember and Micah as a couple because I never felt them growing closer through meaningful conversations or shared experiences. Their relationship seemed to exist because the plot required it rather than because the characters naturally found their way to each other. For a romance that’s clearly meant to carry so much emotional weight, that was a huge disappointment.
The villain also became less interesting the longer the story went on. Every appearance should have increased the tension, yet somehow the opposite happened. Instead of becoming more intimidating, the antagonist gradually lost any sense of menace and ended up feeling surprisingly flat.
What disappointed me almost as much as the romance, however, was the world-building.
The book opens with an impressively detailed glossary, which immediately raised my expectations. I was expecting a layered mythology with fascinating lore to uncover piece by piece. Instead, I finished the novel feeling as though I knew little more than when I had started. The story constantly hints at a much larger world but rarely allows the reader to truly explore it. For a first installment, I wanted enough answers to feel rewarded while still leaving room for future mysteries. Instead, I mostly felt like information was being withheld simply because the plot demanded it.
By the final pages, I wasn’t eagerly anticipating the sequel and I won’t continue this series. I was mostly wondering why a premise with so much potential had chosen to focus so heavily on a romance that never convinced me while leaving its strongest ideas largely unexplored.
This is, without question, one of those books where I can absolutely understand why other readers might fall in love with it. The ingredients are all there: angels, demons, forbidden romance, hidden worlds, ancient secrets, and a capable heroine discovering her true place in the universe. Unfortunately, the execution simply didn’t work for me. The opening chapters promised a gripping urban fantasyFantasy ist ein Teilbereich der Phantastik und leitet sich v... More mystery, but somewhere along the way that promise got buried beneath forced romantic tension, repetitive secrecy, and a story that explained far less than I had hoped.
It’s a shame, because Ember and Ash had all the pieces to become something truly memorable. For me, though, it never managed to assemble them into a satisfying whole.
Conclusion
A fantastic premise and an incredibly strong beginning couldn’t overcome frustrating character dynamics, an unconvincing romance, and a world that remained far more vague than intriguing.
Thorne Saga
Series
| Ember and Ash (#1) | unknown |
About Lisa Renee Jones
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed INSIDE OUT series. Suzanne Todd (producer of Alice in Wonderland) on the INSIDE OUT series: Lisa has created a beautiful, complicated, and sensual world that is filled with intrigue and suspense. Sara’s character is strong, flawed, complex, and sexy - a modern girl we all can identify with.
In addition to the success of Lisa's INSIDE OUT series, she has published many successful titles. The TALL, DARK AND DEADLY series and THE SECRET LIFE OF AMY BENSEN series, both spent several months on a combination of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling lists. Lisa is presently working on a dark, edgy new series, Dirty Money, for St. Martin's Press.
Prior to publishing Lisa owned multi-state staffing agency that was recognized many times by The Austin Business Journal and also praised by the Dallas Women's Magazine. In 1998 Lisa was listed as the #7 growing women owned business in Entrepreneur Magazine.
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