3.75* Good start to a not-your-everyday tough guys series. Decent research, decent tale and decent guys.

This is the first in a new series and at the end of the tale we find out that the author is already at work on book 2, which featured a very decent side character here. Yes, I enjoyed this tale and this side character enough to want to find out if my suspicions about him getting a tale of his own were true, so yay!

Anyway, back to this one. Well, thankfully we Brits don't have the type of major fires recently seen in Australia and the US and so 'smoke jumpers' were entirely unknown to me. I had thought I'd be reading about stuff like in the film, Always (with the brilliant Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, which was playing in my mind as I read), but it was entirely different. I think the author's done a fair amount of research and the subject definitely kept my interest.

The romance in this was a little strange in a way, as Linc had been warned off Jacob by Wyatt, Linc's best friend and Jacob's older brother, and the guys actually became aware of each other when Linc was 29 and Jacob 19, but spent 6 years apart before the tale started-started. During this time, I think, but am not sure, that they pretty much barely saw each other and that maybe a sad event brought them together once, then twice and that's when Linc's resolve started to crumble. I can't explain more or it'd Spoiler the tale, but I wonder how these guys would have gotten together had said sad event not happened. I can't say that I *felt* that they'd have made it against the odds, and the sad event felt a little convenient.

There were elements of homophobia in this tale, but not blown up and not overwhelming to the point of taking over the tale and becoming trope'y. It's hard to describe, as it's not an out-and-out prejudice the way it's treated but it is vocal and it does come from someone I didn't expect it to come from for several reasons, and then later on, it rears its head again, and again. It made me sad but at the same time, it added an unfortunate bit of realism to the tale, because these people weren't old, weren't uneducated and supposedly loved Linc and Jacob, and yet... Sadly, it's an indication of people not accepting what's different, but thankfully, there were a couple of allies in the tale, including the one who's the lead of book 2.

The romance that wasn't intended to be any more than a one-night stand turned out to be hot and heavy and I could see lust more than love but the tale ended with the leads in a good place, several months down the line from where they'd started off, and they, and people around them, had started healing and had opened their minds a little. It wasn't the most authentic or moving romance I've read, as it was sex-driven for the most, but the leads were decent, their feelings and nobility were in the right place, and, the winner for me, was that they loved dogs! Yep, Linc had two adorable rescued dogs here and they appeared quite a bit, and the way Jacob was with them was really sweet, and, they were about to adopt another, I think, so yay!! - Brit dog lover here, lol!

ARC courtesy of Carina Press and NetGalley, for my reading pleasure.

Wow. Annabeth Albert knows how to do a slow burn (ha!) right. It took a while for any sort of relationship to get going, but even when the MCs were just circling around each other the chemistry was off the charts. And then once it got going, the book is nearly impossible to put down. Grumpy, solitary Linc was hard to like sometimes, but he really was just all about putting everyone else’s feelings first, and that can be an admirable trait. I liked Jacob from the get go, and my heart hurt right along side his. It’s a wonderful love story, has just the right amount of action, and definitely starts the serious off with a bang.