Publication Date: June 25, 2014
Liz Williams is a masseuse who had been looking to get out of the small town where gossip is too much and clients are too few. Her hand is forced when she loses her job due to the business closing and walks into the right salon on the right day in Fort Wayne. The job may be temporary but it gives Liz time to make plans. Those plans don’t involve dating clients. Firefighter Torrunn MacKay is a temptation but he has a girlfriend and is living the life of the single guy who has it made. Getting involved would be a really bad idea for both of them. Bad ideas can sometimes be a lot of fun.
The author, Kyra Jacobs, gave me a copy of this book in exchange for my review.
I’d love to hang out with Liz. She’s a great character. She has a can-do attitude, a great relationship with her mother, very supportive friends who she loves like siblings and while having a boyfriend and thinking eventually of children would be great it’s not something she obsesses over. She dreams of the opportunities the bigger city may offer and when she’s there she doesn’t flounder. Fort Wayne is a challenge this chipper go-getter can handle. She is a chick-lit character in a romance readers world and she is divine. Liz does have faults. Making half-caff coffee? What’s the point? She allows herself to be a bit run over in the interest of advancement and what she really wants for her life. This is not the woman who feels the world is out to get her or to allow a Frosty to go unfinished. She’s making lemonade but with store-bought lemons and not the one life hands her. One of her new clients is Torrunn, a co-worker’s boyfriend and local smoking hot firefighter. A client and taken mean way off of the list of possibilities. Maybe he has some hot firefighter friends?
Readers of this blog will know how I feel about the catty rival. In [easyazon-link asin=”B00LBAMNT4″ locale=”us”]Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes Book 2)[/easyazon-link], Bunni, the workplace nemesis, has good reason to be a little miffed. She had hoped to take the place of the boss’ girlfriend when she went on maternity leave. Not only so that she would be the only one working on her smoking hot firefighter boyfriend but for personal advancement. Here some woman walks in during an argument between the bosses and all of a sudden she has the job Bunni wants? That’s not right. Of course, she’s going to resent Liz and when Liz and Torrunn are a little too friendly isn’t that something else that maybe Liz wants to take from Bunni? Jacobs does the impossible making us feel a bit sorry for this young woman with a penchant for being so nasty.
There is a bit of an arson sub-plot but as with romance there is a goal. Jacobs doesn’t obsess over that goal. She builds a relationship so by the time the end is achieved it feels organic. There’s no contrived plotting or forcing of hands in [easyazon-link asin=”B00LBAMNT4″ locale=”us”]Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes Book 2)[/easyazon-link].
[easyazon-link asin=”B00LBAMNT4″ locale=”us”]Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes Book 2)[/easyazon-link] is a great novel for kick-back time on the weekend. It’s fun, flirty and riddled with really nice people. We get the story through the eyes of Liz and she generally is seeing the best is people so while Bunni is a bit of a jerk, Liz tries to understand her disappointment in losing out on a job to Liz and not wanting anyone working on her boyfriend but herself. While Torrunn is a bit of a douchebag but he does good for the community and while there’s an indication that he doesn’t treat his girlfriends in a serious nature, he’s generally a good guy and the platonic byplay may be flirt but its friendly without artifice.Jessica and Nate from “Armed with Steele” make an appearance in the novel as Jessica befriends Liz when she comes to the big city. Readers invested in the series can be sure that this couple is in it for the long haul. They’re doing well and their relationship is progressing at an appropriate pace – the luxury of the series novel.
[easyazon-link asin=”B00LBAMNT4″ locale=”us”]Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes Book 2)[/easyazon-link] is an easy, fun and sweet read about people that the reader really wants to win.Read a review of the first book in the series Armed with Steele.
Kyra Jacobs is a writer based in the Midwest with a passion for gardening and golf. Armed With Steele is her first novel.
For more information about Kyra Jacobs and her work, visit her website. You can connect with her on Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter @KyraJacobsBooks.