Customer Reviews

Never Too Hot

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the third installment in the Hot Shots Series by Belle Andre. You don't have to read them in order, but I suggest you do. The first installment, Wild Heat, is the story of Logan Cain, the Hotshot Crew leader and arson investigator, Maya Jackson. It was a great introduction to the Tahoe Pine Hotshot Crew. The second installment, Hot as Sin: A Novel, reunites Dianna Kelley with Sam MacKenzie, a member of Logan's Hotshot crew.

This installment is about wounded Hotshot, Connor MacKenzie, Sam's younger brother. He needs to distant himself from everything (everyone) and decides to renovate his family cabin in mountains of the Adirondacks. He never expects that his grandparents have rented the cabin to recently divorced, Ginger Sinclair, and he wants her out...out of his cabin...out of his life. She has other plans...she is standing her ground...and not giving in. The tension that builds between them is extreme...if I was a crier - then this book would have done it. Between the darkness Connor faces and the pain they endure - keep the Kleenex near.

There are other relationships in this book that are part of the sub-plot that assist with moving you through book, each could be considered novellas (even the supporting characters/plots are well developed.

The back cover stated that she is currently work on the next installment - I hope so - I am looking forward to the next book in the series - wonder who it will be about.

Bella Andre writes another scorcher in her firefighter series Never Too Hot.

Hot Shot firefighter Connor Macenzie comes to his families cabin in the Adirondack mountains to recover and rebuild his life. Connor was severely burned and he needs to heal in order to return to the job he loves. He sure doesn't have the time or the energy to deal with the woman who says she has his cabin for the summer.

Ginger Sinclair is happy to be away from her old life. She has found her purpose at Blue Mountain Lake. Ginger can paint at will and work at the local dinner. She is shocked to find her landlords grandson laying claim to her cabin. But Ginger has a signed lease and will fight to stay at the cabin.

Connor and Ginger agree to co-habitat at the cabin. Connor is going to do repairs while he is there and will try not to get in Gingers way. But Ginger is a distraction that Connor doesn't think he needs. Though she may be the woman to heal him heart and soul. Ginger had had enough of men after the stunts of her ex husband. She is leery of Connor at first but his strength and character convince her that is his a man she can depend on for life.

Hot Shot is an intense story about second chances and letting people into your life. Ginger and Connor both have been scared by lives up and downs. They learn that they can open up their hearts and love again. This series is fast paced and emotional charged. I am eagerly awaiting the next book by this author.

First of all, let me start by saying that I am usually a big fan of this author. Almost every book I have read by her, I have enjoyed. With this book, I felt let down after eagerly anticipating Conner's story. If you have read the other books in this series, you know that Conner was severely burned and scarred in the earlier books. Now Conner is fighting through the pain of scarring and trying to get his life back in order. He is on his last appeal to join the Hot Shot crew again, something he desperately wants more than anything.


When Conner goes out to his families cabin expecting solitude while he renovates it, he unexpectedly comes across Ginger renting the place. His Grandparent's failed to mention this to him, and now finds himself under the same roof as the curvy and attractive woman.


While I enjoyed the love story that author created between Conner and Ginger, I feel that the author let us down with the suspense in this book. It was predictable on so many points, had little action outside the bedroom, and too many side stories going on that I couldn't fully enjoy the story of Conner and Ginger. By the end of the book I felt a little disappointed. I wanted so much more from Conner and Ginger, but I was too distracted by all of the other characters trying to find their happy ending as well.


Overall not a bad book, but not one of the authors best works. This could be read as a stand alone without reading the previous books, but to get the full impact of Conner's history and personality I would recommend reading the other books first.

I didn't know this was a series - so now I am going back to read the first two Wild Heat and Hot as Sin: A Novel.

In this book Connor MacKenzie has come back to his grandparent's cabin to help rebuild and recover from his accident. He finds that his grandparents have rented the cabin to Ginger Sinclair. Connor and Ginger have amazing chemistry but while they are being pulled together each is trying to find themselves. It's more than a love story it dealt with real struggles that make up our layers. There is a secondary love story that is very interesting - great book - off to read more by this author.

If you enjoy this genre I would also suggest; Crazy for Love (Hqn) , Nothing But Trouble & The Bliss Factor.

Reviewed for [...] (5 out of 10 on the blog)

This was not what I expected. Wild Heat and Hot as Sin were great reads, and I expected something special to conclude the Hot Shots series. I have an issue with authors who change genres in the middle of a series, and Bella Andre has taken her Hot Shots series from romantic suspense focusing on one relationship to contemporary romance (in a different location) with multiple relationships involving characters of all ages. Once I adjusted my expectations I thought the book was okay - if a tad clichéd - but I am disappointed with what Andre has done.

Perhaps it is the success of Robyn Carr's cosy, small town `Virgin River' series that has driven other writers to move in this direction; there are certainly echoes of Carr in this one. However, watching so many of my favourite authors move away from one of my favourite genres is not a trend I appreciate.

Books featuring firefighter heroes tend to leave a lot to be desired. Writers apparently work on the idea all a woman wants to read about is a man with lots of muscles hauling distressed damsels out of burning buildings. I appreciated the Hot Shots books because Andre has clearly done a lot of research about the profession, and the stories had depth others in the genre did not. That is no different in Never Too Hot; she knows what she's writing about, and it makes for a more believable story.
The problem though, is that the firefighter aspect doesn't come into this story until a couple of pages towards the end! What a waste!

For me the best aspect of Never Too Hot was the story of Connor's father and the childhood sweetheart he abandoned thirty years earlier. Their parts of the book were where I became emotionally involved and they were far more interesting characters than the main pair. I would have liked to have read a full book about them.

This was not a terrible book, but nor was there anything in particular about it that I found special. Connor's brother featured in the last book and I liked his character very much, so I was a bit let down to discover Connor was so bland. We've seen him in the background until now and I expected the story of him finding life and love after a terrible career-ending injury to be something special. Connor could have been anybody in this book. He does have bad burns from something that happened in book one, but he could have attained those burns another way and his chosen profession would have been completely irrelevant to the story.
There was simply no conflict in the plot. In book one they were looking for a killer. In book two they were looking for the heroine's sister. In this one they were...fixing the electrical wiring in the cabin.

Ginger was a walking cliché. The poor rich girl whose parents and ex-husband never accepted her because she was a little larger than other women in her social circles. The woman the hero is more turned on by than any woman he's ever met before. So turned on, the woman's weight is portrayed as the most important aspect of her character. As for her character, Ginger was too pushy and rude and intrusive for me, getting involved in everyone's business and demanding answers to very personal questions. I connect with a story better if the heroine is someone I'd be happy to spend time with in real life; Ginger wasn't.

In this story - as with all others in the `discover life is better when you move to a small mountain town' genre - we have plenty of scenes where Connor discovers maybe the exciting life he led wasn't as good as this new lifestyle. He pines for the happy, quiet little marriage all his childhood friends have - blueberry pancakes and pot belly included. The women gather to knit and gossip and all of them want lots of babies. I was waiting for the Brady Bunch to make an appearance to make the stereotype complete. I only kept reading because I was so shocked the author who created the first two books in the series could have created this one.

On a side note, I'm astounded Andre thought it was realistic that adults could have sex for weeks and forget to use contraception the whole time! It was a lazy way to make the plot arrive at a desired point.

Romantic suspense authors seem to be particularly bad about genre-jumping before their series is over. Whatever the reason, I don't like it. The first two books - Wild Heat and Hot as Sin - were excellent, and so while Never Too Hot was often good, it was definitely a big letdown for me.

VERDICT:
I can highly recommend the first two books in the Hot Shots series. If you plan on reading this one be prepared for a genre-change and also for some truly clichéd situations. If this was the first Bella Andre book I read I'm not sure I would read another. Don't start here.

I love, love, love Bella Andre's firefighters! Stories about the good guys falling hard for good women are hard to resist. Strong, vulnerable, passionate -- with a rocking bod -- are great traits for a hero.

Newly-divorced heroine has made a new life for herself in the past 9 months in a small Adirondacks town. She allows scarred former-fighfighter Hero to stay in the house she's renting so he can fix up the place for his grandparents who are the house's owners. An affair soon occurs b/w these 2. Hero makes it clear that its only temporary since he's hoping to resume his firefighting job in CA & he thinks she deserves someone more stable than him. But it's not so easy to keep it casual as their connection to each other grows.

I was expecting a hot romance per its title but unfortunately didn't get one with this book. The writing, romance, & sexual chemistry were all pretty prosaic. Even the sex scenes weren't hot, although they were described as such. The main problem with this book is that it failed to come alive. The words were there but the emotional component was missing. The characters were interesting, including some of the 2ndary ones. Heroine wanted to take more control of her life instead of being busy pleasing others, while Hero wanted his former body, career, & life back but knew it was a losing battle. These were good materials for an exciting romance/story but Andre failed to make them engaging enough for me to care or remember them.

Mildly recommended.

Two years ago hotshot firefighter Connor MacKenzie was horribly scarred by a fire that he couldn't outrun. Now he's returned to his grandparents' log cabin in the Adirondacks to fix it up and bring it up to code while he waits to hear the news on his final appeal to get back to his Hotshot crew. Fighting fires is everything that means anything to him, and the work at the cabin will also help him get back into prime physical shape so he won't miss any time when he gets the okay to go back to Tahoe.

Connor comes face to face with the first problem with his plan when he finds one Ginger Sinclair painting on the porch of the cabin. The beautiful divorcee has a year lease and has spent eight months of that lease exploring herself, growing into her skin, and learning to stand on her own two feet after a bad marriage and a difficult childhood robbed her so much of her identity and self confidence. When Connor shows up, her new-found inner strength goads her into standing her ground and she refuses to back down from the surly but scarred man.

It's Ginger's ability to see the man, not just the scars, that reaches out to the dark spots in Connor's psyche and soothes him in ways he wasn't expecting, and her willingness to open her heart to him moves him in ways he dared not dream. But when Connor's life is once again rocked by tragedy and he has to face a truth that leaves him shaken, Ginger's heart may be all that keeps him from losing himself completely.

This contemporary romance by Andre is well written with a smooth narrative and conversational dialogue, and while not terribly original or groundbreaking, the plot is nicely layered with a secondary romance subplot and additional threads of a troubled teen and some family angst. Connor and Ginger were realistic main characters, their issues sympathetic and realistic, and their relationship emotional and touching.

Yet despite those strong positives and the fact that there's nothing bad about yummy firefighters, I had some issues with the book, though most had nothing to do with critical aspects of the story itself. Instead, there were several points of the story that weren't to my personal taste in contemporary romance novels.

I tend to favor romance that introduces the characters and draws out the development of their romantic relationship, building towards a satisfying conclusion. In Connor and Ginger's case, they fell into bed a little too precipitously and were heavily emotionally involved before they really got much of a chance to know one another.

I also have a huge issue with the irresponsibility of unprotected sex. I don't find it at all sexy or romantic, actually, when two people get swept away and play the "of course I'm clean/safe" game afterwards. First, it seems contrived when coupled with pregnancy as a plot thread, and second, it's always struck me as more disrespectful to a sexual partner than in any way romantic. And to have unprotected sex be more the norm than protected sex for whatever reason just pulls me right out of the story and starts icking me out.

In relation to the story, I found the romance history between Isabel and Andrew more distracting than beneficial as a subplot, and when Andrew showed up, their relationship became pretty predictable. I would have preferred more page time given to the character and romantic development of Ginger and Connor's relationship instead. Along with the other plot threads, that would have been more appealing to me as a whole.

I did like Ginger and Connor together, and I thought the issues Connor had with his scars and the way Ginger dealt with them were some of the stronger and more appealing points of the story. There was plenty of depth inherent in those issues. I would have enjoyed seeing those facets expanded. By the end, though, the combination of the rather pedestrian plot and the issues that crossed my lines in my reading preferences lessened my overall enjoyment of the read.

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Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.

Hotshot firefighter Connor has been sidelined with an injury. Burned in a fire in Lake Tahoe a couple years earlier, he is returnign to the Adirondack cabin owned by his grandparents to make some repairs and wait out the verdict of whether he will be allowed back on his team of hotshots. He does not expect o find that his grandparents rented the cabin out to Ginger, a sexy divorcee who will undoubtedly ruin his plans of solitude. With neither budging, and no room at the local inn, they reluctantly cohabitate, but all that close proximity soon gives way to plenty of steam. Can Connor ignore his scars and let someone else into his world? Connor's estranged father also comes to visit and rekindles a teen romance of his own.

I usually love Bella Andre novels and eat them up. The last couple have been disappointments. While this one is a step up from the implausible last one in the series (Hot as Sin: A Novel), neither holds a candle to the one that started it all, Wild Heat, which flawlessly mixed intrigue with steamy romance. I really didn't care for either of the main characters. Connor is a self-indulgent jackass throughout most of the book, while Ginger is a doormat; and the whole last minute addition of an unplanned pregnancy results ina trite story which makes me wonder if this is the same Bella Andre that created such a compelling story with Wild Heat.

I'll spare you the plot details, since you can read them only a few short paragraphs above my review. Let me just say, this is by far one of the worst books I've read in a while. "You're beautiful, I want you - but I can't have you! Let me kiss you anyway." PUH-lease. Gillian, who is escaping a horrible marriage, spends her days painting and working in a restaurant. Yet, she has time to join a knitting club and gossip about Connor, who everyone knows. Dull, cliché, and not worth it! Bella Andre, you disappoint. I want my $6.29 back!