Review

The second book in the Bachelor Fireman series fails to ignite with a silly heroine and a changed hero.

Katie Dane manages a bar she wants no part in running. Ryan Blake is trying to find his way back to the profession he loves. They try to help each other and fall in love in the process.

There were several things in this story that didn’t work for me. Katie Dane, the heroine of the story, was the biggest problem I had with this book. She is silly. Her big idea to “save” her parent’s bar is to burn it down. That’s right – Burn. It. Down. Katie is supposed to be of intelligent, but doesn’t come across that way with her decisions. I could see how in desperation this idea would pop into her head, but not the follow through, especially when the attempts (and there are several attempts) were thwarted by her new bartender…a former fireman.

In the first Bachelor Fireman book (The Fireman Who Loved Me) we were introduced to Ryan Blake. Ryan is so good looking and popular in the first book. In Hot For Fireman he is still just as swoon worthy, but things aren’t going well for Ryan. He’s no longer a fireman after an accident in which he broke protocol and acted recklessly. At first this fact is confusing if you read the first book. It took me a while to realize that a year and a half had passed between books. The year and a half he had spent wondering changed him and you could tell a huge difference between book #1 and #2. Ryan didn’t feel like the same character from the first book. I liked Ryan, but couldn’t understand what he saw in Katie. I just didn’t feel that the characters were right for each other and couldn’t buy into their happily ever after.

The writing is okay, but the humor feels forced. There were instances where I knew I was supposed to laugh, but just didn’t find anything funny. Another problem that I had was that I didn’t like the sex scenes. There are some odd descriptions used. One that caught my eye enough that I highlighted the text:

Her nipples had so much personality. They rose up to meet his touch with the same direct feistiness Katie had.

Feisty nipples with personality? I was completely thrown by these two lines and found nothing sexy about this sexy scene. In my opinion a romance needs that connection between the hero and heroine and it has to be sexy or it feels lacking and changes the way I feel about the characters.

I just couldn’t love this book. I liked Ryan enough to finish reading and find out what happened between him and Katie, but couldn’t believe in them being together forever.

Reviewed by Carrie