Published: October 2, 2018
This is the newest book by the incredible J. R. Ward. You saw in The Wedding from Hell the the short fling between Anne and Danny. Well, this book is going to make you go “what the fuck just happened?” Ward has tackled some things in this book and I can’t believe she went where she did. That being said this review will have on MAJOR SPOILER because I can’t write the review without it. But you needed to know so you can decided if you want to keep reading.
All Anne had ever wanted was to be a firefighter like her father and brother before her. When that is taken away from her during a five-alarm fire she doesn’t know what to do with her life. She understands fires better than people so she works her ass off to become an arson detective. Not the same thrilling work or life calling that she lost but the bills need to be paid. When on assignment she notices some correlations between the fire she is investigating and the one that was her last. She discovers a string of arson cases all loosely connected to one man but she can’t directly connect him to any of them. When she is being threatened because of her case Danny finds out and won’t let anything else happen to her.
Danny has been spiraling since his involvement in Anne no longer being with the crew. He blames himself for her losing the one thing she loved even though he almost died in that fire as well. But when you love someone their pain is worse for you than it is for them. When Anne is called in to bring him back from the brink he needs to decide if he is going to pursue her like he wants to or let her walk away again. He decided that he had enough of his own bullshit and is going to pursue her until she realizes that he is the only one for her. When she is being threatened it is all Danny can do to not be with her 24/7. However, the instigator of everything is someone that no one would ever suspect.
This book was so good. It took on issues like HIV, PTSD, and overdosing. Now I’ve read a lot of romance novels that have dealt with trauma cases but never one that was instigated by the two protagonists. That is about as unheard of as having a character be HIV positive. That just doesn’t happen. But as good as the book was I did have some issues. Like why didn’t Anne realize that Moose’s number didn’t show up on her phone? Or who the hell is Sol and how did they lose him? Those are questions that I just don’t have answers to. It’s pretty frustrating. Besides those, this was an excellent read and should be read by one and all.
—“The young woman stopped short and looked at him like he was suggesting she’d voted for Trump.” -p.48—
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