She spent six years forgetting Harley. The neighborhood remembered her.

Casey Cooper was ten when her mother's remarriage moved them out of Harley and into a different part of Ashland entirely. She left behind streets where gangs controlled everything after dark, and the three boys who had been her closest friends. For six years she built another life. Then someone chose to drive drunk, the accident took everything that new life had given her, and Casey moved back to the only place left. Harley had not softened in her absence.

Vail is still there, now leading a crew called the Spades, and so are Lee and Shaw. The gap between the children they were and the people they have become is wider than Casey expected, and the reunion is nothing like the one she might have imagined at ten. Underneath the complicated reconnection, something darker is building: a gang known as the Faceless is moving teenage girls out of Harley, and putting a stop to it will pull Casey, Vail, and the rest of them into something far larger than any personal history.

Ashes shifts the Bleeding Hearts series to new protagonists while holding onto the darkness of the earlier volumes. Dylan Page builds the reverse harem dynamic with patience across 14 hours, and the gang thriller thread that runs alongside the romance does not resolve cleanly or cheaply.

Audiobook review ★★★★★

Casey comes back to Harley with nothing, and the neighborhood takes note

I came to this book straight after Torment Part Two, which meant adjusting to a different protagonist and a different corner of the same world. Casey is not Torment's narrator, and the dynamic she brings is not the same. She has been outside Harley. She knows what the place looks like from the other side, which means she reads it differently from inside, and that gap is what Dylan Page uses to build most of the early tension. By the time the romance threads begin developing, I was already invested in what the return itself was costing her.

The reverse harem setup is handled with more patience than the genre usually allows. Vail does not soften the moment Casey comes back into his orbit. Lee and Shaw have their own internal politics, their own loyalty structures, and the process by which Casey becomes part of those structures again is slow and uneven in ways that feel accurate to people who were separated as children and are meeting now essentially as strangers. Page earns the dynamic rather than assuming it.

The Faceless trafficking plot is the book's most difficult thread to hold alongside the romance. It does not always sit cleanly next to it. Page keeps both moving, and the convergence in the final section carries enough force to justify the parallel structure. The reveal about Casey's real father is the kind of late disclosure that can either overload a story or sharpen it. Here it sharpens it, and the final chapters land harder for it.

Ashes is a book that asks you to care about a neighborhood you have only seen from the outside for two books, and then care about a protagonist navigating it from the inside for the first time in years. That is a harder ask than continuing with familiar characters, and it mostly works because Page keeps Casey's perspective specific and grounded rather than relying on the existing world to do the emotional work.

At 14 hours, the audiobook has room for both dimensions of the story without either being compressed. The performance keeps the emotional registers distinct, particularly in the scenes where Casey has to hold her personal history with these men alongside the immediate danger they are all in. That balance is what makes the listening experience hold together across a story with a lot of moving parts.

Dark romance Reverse harem New adult Gang warfare Friends to lovers

Download the free audiobook: Ashes (The Bleeding Hearts, Book 3)

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Audiobook cover: Ashes (The Bleeding Hearts, Book 3) by Dylan Page

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Ashes (The Bleeding Hearts, Book 3) by Dylan Page follows Casey Cooper, pulled out of Harley at ten when her mother remarried, then forced back at sixteen after a drunk driving accident takes away everything the new life had given her. Harley is now run by the Celtic Beasts, Vail leads his own crew called the Spades, and the reunion with her childhood friends is nothing like the one she imagined. A gang known as the Faceless is trafficking teenage girls out of the neighborhood, and the fight to stop them pulls Casey and Vail's world apart before it has any chance of coming back together.

Take advantage of the free trial, cancellable at any time, to hear this 14-hour audiobook. The story moves between a reverse harem romance built on fractured childhood friendships and a gang thriller that escalates steadily toward a final section where both threads converge. The pacing gives each dimension room to develop rather than rushing either.

Once you download the audiobook, it stays yours permanently, even if you cancel before the trial ends. The free trial also gives you access to thousands of other titles at no extra cost. Start listening now.