SLOW BURN by Anne Marsh

Slow Burn by Anne Marsh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

NetGalley free read

I want to say that I like it and it's better than just okay. I feel I may be being a little hard since I read two really great and funny books back to back before reading this book and I don't know if I'm being fair in my rating if I give it a little better than I am actually feeling.

Faye is recently divorced from LA firefighter Mike, who spent more time at the firehouse than home with his wife. When she finds him in bed with a female member of his team, she had enough. Now she's ready to have a new adventure, cleaning out her 401K to buy her dream Corvette and taking it on the road for a new job as a freelance photojournalist for a magazine.

She winds up in a small town called Strong, where the Donovan Brothers have formed thier fire jump company. She's there to take pictures of the firefighters and the old firehouse they are restoring, when she comes upon a firefighter fighting a brush fire, who may actually be an arsonist.

Evan Donovan is one of three adopted boys, who know have returned to their home town and their adopted mother to build their fire jumping buisness. Evan is a big man of few words. Faye's ex-husband, Mike, calls his old Marine budy, Evan, asking him to keep an eye on his wife on the day their divorce has become fianl.

Faye is three sheets to the wind the moment she first see's Evan and doesn't remember that he walked right up to her and called her by name. But they are immeidiately attracted to earch others and between fire jumps and the local arsonist, they act on their supercharged attraction to each other.

Evan is sweet and Faye is obviously attracted to him both because he's physically hot, but because he's a nice guy. He promises her and Adventure for two weeks in exchange for sticking around and not writing a story about the arsonist until they can figure out who he is.

One of the things I don't like about this book is how Evan and his brothers discuss early on that Mike told him to keep and eye on his ex-wife, but he doesn't tell her. She discovers thier connection while looking at photos from his mother's photo album.

Then Faye's boss tells her he needs her photos and story sooner than the two weeks she promised Evan and she doesn't immediately tell him about her deadline. She waits until she's mad at him about Mike before she says anything.

I get that the author is trying to show relationship drama, but this was just dumb to me. Speak up sooner rather than later and you won't have all the drama. How hard can it be?

Other than that, the book is short and not a bad story. It's just the characters do some stupid things. Also, a quite a few of the surrounding characters aren't really flushed out either.

Supposedly, there's something going on between Ma's bartender, Mimi, and third Donovan brother, Rio. But we barely see or hear about her.

Also, Faye's sister calls her at the beginning of the book to check on her, but never checks again in the several days that she's there. That's strange to me. She seems concerned about how Faye is taking the divorce on that day. I would think she would call again, or at the very least call and Faye would have her sister to discuss with Evan which would lead into her family.

Like I said, this book suffers because the last two I read were spectacular and I didn't feel even half of that here.

View all my reviews