While I didn't love the first book in this series, I was intrigued enough to see if I'm still in my F1 era and wanted to give this author a second try. Ultimately this story was not for me, there was not romance, the plot timeline seemed very choppy and kept jumping, while dual POV, thr characters didn't really have their own voices or any depth. The ending was rushed with a seemingly out of nowhere kind of twist and it just didn't feel like a book to get lost in. Sure there was mention of F1 but no glimpse into the sport or even any of the destinations. It was just kind of lacking overall. While I can't for the life of me DNF, it was a tough skim to the end.


Thank you Netgalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for the ARC in exchange for my review!

The writing could have been better for sure, and the pacing could have used some work. It wasn’t bad, but I just didn’t enjoy the story. It was really predictable, and compared to the other F1 romances I’ve read, it just felt like it was lacking something to make it feel special. None of the characters were really any one I wanted to route for, they kind of all seemed toxic and immature.

Well, this one starts with a bang. 😏

This age gap, F1 romance pairs a sports journalist with a forty-something, team principal widower. Neither knows who the other one is at their first meeting, but things go sideways for them once their identities and occupations are revealed.

Most of the story happens concurrently with the plot line of Double Apex, so I do recommend reading that one first (although I enjoyed this one more). A chunk of the book is written in a series of vignettes set at the different stops on the F1 racing circuit; knowing what’s happening in Double Apex helps plot the timeline and provide context for the encounters between Natalia and Klaus and what’s happening in both their personal and professional lives along the way.

Prepare for some angst in this one.

The book itself gets unwieldy and runs a bit long, but the chemistry between Natalia and Klaus is done well. Plus I enjoyed watching them open up to each other.

The audiobook has dual narration by Max Rauch and Cecily Foster, meaning she performs all the voices in the chapters from Natalia’s POV and he performs the voices in the chapters from Klaus’s. I enjoyed the narration from both, especially the Austrian accents they use for Klaus.

3.5 stars

I received advance copies of the ebook from Forever and the audiobook from Hachette Audio. All review opinions are my own.

I loved Double Apex!
To say I was excited to start Coming in Hot by Josie Juniper is an understatement!
I enjoyed this book! The chemistry between the characters was incredible.
The writing is great and flowed really well.
I found myself unable to stop reading even though the book took me into the late hours of the night. I would definitely recommend this.,

This book may not be everyone's jam but it sure was mine. I'm an F1 racing fan so anything set against the backdrop of that international race circuit is going to automatically have appeal for me plus Klaus and Natalia intrigued me as secondary characters in Juniper's Double Apex so I was already primed to discover the behind-the-scenes details of their story.

The book is told from Klaus' and Natalia's points of view in alternating chapters so right from the start we're privy to what's going on in their minds. I love the insight into their feelings, especially when things get messy. And, boy howdy, do they get messy. Juniper really puts these two through the wringer and she does it over an extended period of time with a lot of push and pull, and separations, during the process.

The racing aspect of the series is still an important factor in this book though not as front and center as in book one. The relationship and character development definitely take center stage in this one.

Some readers may get a bit impatient with both Klaus and Natalia but I didn't. Yes, they have incredible chemistry. And, yes, their physical relationship is steamy with a capital S. And yes, the feelings between them continue to deepen so why don't they just admit they love one another and have their happy ending? Well, sometimes things are a bit more complex. These two are each carrying some pretty heavy emotional baggage that needs to be sorted before they can even begin to consider a lasting relationship. They each make mistakes that derail their relationship progress but they also learn essential lessons that are necessary. They are multi-layered characters with realistic flaws, especially considering their past experiences. I appreciate that the author gives them the time and space to grow individually before allowing them to grow as a couple. And yes, they do finally get their hard-won happy ending, one I wholeheartedly celebrated.

ARC received from Forever via NetGalley
Fair and unbiased review

DNF at 50% - This book just fell flat for me and I really struggled to get past what felt like constant miscommunication between the 2 MCs. Thank you so much for the advanced copy.

DNF AT 15%

so the cover is very pretty but i can’t keep going. i wanted badly to like klaus but he kinda radiates red flags. and natalia NEEEDS a better friend than phaedra. lemme grab the quote i highlighted.

“-making me feel stupid in the way that always comes naturally to her” if your friend is making you feel STUPID then you need to get better friends. phaedra steamrolls natalia at every instance and it immediately sent off alarms in my head.
“making each other ‘the bad guy’ had always been part of our Old Married Couple vibe, so i’m not worried.” NATALIA IM WORRIED FOR YOU

the book had a time jump at the beginning of each of the chapters i did read and from reading the reviews of those who finished this book… that apparently continues throughout the rest of the book which begs the question of the stability of the plot if it needs CONTINUOUS jumps and info dumps to keep the reader updated.

i did want to enjoy this, especially bc im a fan of a good ol age gap romance but the red flags of the main characters and the skippy writing made my head hurt.

OH!!!! and klaus gave natalia MONEY after she had a one night stand with him….. idk what id even do in that situation

thank you so so much to netgalley and the publishers for an eARC of this book!!

This is a very fun and sexy F1 romance. I enjoyed the plot, the progression of the characters' relationships, and the fact that it was between a CEO and a journalist (very enjoyable).

The parts of this book that overlapped with book 1 in this series were fun and I enjoyed filling in the gaps. However, the constant fighting and unrealistic expectations regarding transparency were too drawn out. I think a more developed ending, showing the couple actually together would have helped make up for the negativity, but it seemed that as soon as resolution was in reach, the story quickly ended.

This was such a great book I really loved it I honestly enjoyed the tension between the two mcs it made for a great romance

Natalia Evans is a journalist preparing to cover her first F1 race season. On her first night, she meets a handsome stranger in the hotel lobby and they sleep together. Come to find out he is Klaus Franca team principal of Emerald, one of the premier racing teams. They'll spend the season teasing one another through country after country trying to deny their attraction all while battling the opposition in which their respective roles place them.

There are a couple of things I really appreciate about the book. I liked that Klaus is older, not inappropriately so, but that he's lived this whole other life before Natalia and he's lost and been through some things and I thought it was a very interesting dynamic between them. I almost wish it would have been explored just a little bit more.

I also liked the conflict between Natalia being a journalist whose job it is to, basically, report on Klaus' job which leads to more than a few secrets between them. Which allows for some interesting conflict - the exploration of which gets a bit messy, but I think that's par for the course seeing as how I don't think there is an easy answer when your jobs place you on opposite ends.

Unfortunately, there were probably more things that didn't work out for me so well. The story is told throughout the the racing season. I personally am not a racing fan per se, I've never really watched or followed it, but I can understand the intensity and the the draw. We don't get a lot of that because we're not experiencing much of the actual racing seeing as neither Natalia nor Klaus are driving, it almost reads as a behind-the-scenes look.

There is also the fact that each chapter reads like a vignette as we follow the racing season from country to country. Most every chapter picks up weeks or months after the previous. Only a few are actually sequential with one another. Because of this, I often felt like I was playing catch up. From one chapter to the next we could be thrown into the middle of something or come in at the tale end of something else with only vague references of what went down. It was slightly disorienting having to double check and make sure I didn't gloss over something or accidentally skip ahead somehow.

Full disclosure, and in all fairness, I did not read the first book and that's on me of course. It did feel very much like we were getting the other half of a story in certain instances. I wasn't so lost that I had no clue, but the little things that you're not aware of adds up and it dampened the reading experience. I feel like this also doesn't give it a chance to build any depth between the real issues that are between Klaus and Natalia. This only really comes to any kind of meaningful thread close to the end, in which case we run into a too-little-too-late scenario for me.

I'm not saying that I won't read another book in this series, at the very least I would like to go back and properly pick up the first book to fill in some of the blanks. I would also be interested to see what the next book tackles.

I put off reading Coming In Hot by Josie Juniper until I was able to get my hands (ears!?) on the audiobook! Why? Because I needed another book boyfriend with an accent in the worst way!

What happens when a widowed Team Principle and a younger journalist meet at a bar? A spicy age-gap Formula 1 romance, of course!

I liked that this book kind of stepped outside Juniper's women of STEM niche and highlighted supporting rolls within Formula 1 racing! I also loved that the first bit took place simultaneously with Double Apex, book one in Frontrunners.

Natalia is strong, fierce and represents female empowerment very well with her roll as a journalist following the F1 circuit. Klaus is gruff with the best of intentions, though they are initially jarring to Natalia (and this reader). But once he explains himself, it all became water under the bridge! These two characters are so deeply flawed. Okay, flawed isn't the right adjective. They're emotionally damaged from previous life experiences that created jaded, vulnerable people that sought to protect their own hearts, never wanting to be hurt again. Yup, that sums them up better!

Alas, I've got one-ish complaint... I just wanted more steam! The back and forth love/hate (loathing turns to rip-each-others-clothes-off-bounce-down-the-hallway moments real fast here) helped build the tension, though I didn't necessarily always believe the lust and chemistry between Natalia and Klaus. But then I go back to this was literally who they were as characters, guarding themselves from hurt... and it makes complete sense!

How could I not talk about the audiobook with that hype? It's narrated by Cecily Foster and Max Rauch and it absolutely ticked my boxes! Foster filled Natalia's roll, feeling it and experiencing it, rather than just reading it! Rauch was wounded, as Klaus would in fact sound, which was perfect for his character! And yes, obviously that accent was pretty good too, okay!?

Yes, read it! Yes audiobook it!

Thank you NetGalley, Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and Hachette Audio for the complimentary copies to read and review.

Coming in hot | Josie Juniper 🏎️
⭐️⭐️⭐️

*Thank you to Netgalley, Josie Juniper and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for the ARC in exchange with an honest review

Coming in hot is a romance set in the F1 universe, it’s an age gap, it’s a morally gray man and a young determined woman. It had everything in it to make me swoon over it, except it didn’t hit the spot it should have 🤷‍♀️

It had such potential at the beginning, I was really hooked to Klaus’ (Team Principal) and Natalia’s (journalist) journeys. The many back and forths in their relationship, the constant miscommunication and dishonesty, it made me increasingly detached from the story throughout the book.

Even though I really liked the certain mystery and the complementary parts of the plot, I thought the characters were a bit too immature for their respective ages (35 and 46). I loved them but also hated them, you know?

This book is the second one in an interconnected series called Frontrunners. I haven’t read the first one, Double Apex, but it didn’t impact my appreciation of the universe. Overall, I had a fun time reading it, it was light and funny, but maybe not for me.

I was especially excited to read this after learning the rules of Formula 1 this spring, and the premise immediately intrigued me—a silver fox Team Principal falling for an off-limits journalist? Yes, please. I was even getting major Toto Wolff vibes from Klaus, which made the opening scene between him and hot mess Natalia feel electric. Their chemistry in that first encounter? Off the charts. And Klaus was smooth—right up until he made a major misstep by offering her money after their night together.

Unfortunately, that’s where the pacing lost me. The first 30% unfolds behind the scenes of the first book in the series, with very little narrative momentum beyond the slow rebuilding of trust between Natalia and Klaus. Then, just as the romance begins to settle, everything resets and we essentially start the arc over again—another 30% of second chances before the central conflict finally emerges with the investigation into Klaus’ team.

While I liked the concept of the tension between love and ambition—especially as Natalia is faced with a story that could make her career but ruin Klaus—I found the on-again, off-again dynamic increasingly difficult to stay engaged with. I ultimately DNF’d around the 70% mark.

The sizzling chemistry from the start didn’t carry through for me, and the writing style felt a bit too emotionally distant to fully draw me in. Readers looking for a political F1 drama may enjoy this more, but personally, I was hoping for a stronger emotional payoff and a deeper connection to the romance.

This book had me hooked chapter one and I was absolutely ready to eat this book. However, that’s where my enjoyment ended. I feel like there was never a point where I was not confused in the timeline or an event that happened during a time skip. I feel like if some chapters were continuous, there would be more time for connection and less time for confusion.

This is book two of the series and was the first F1 book I’ve read where neither of the characters are drivers, so this was a different view on the F1 world. Both characters had a lot of history to get over to trust each other as trust and poor communication is their biggest issue. Romance was hot and cold, up and down due to being forbidden in a way due to their jobs but also they had a strong connection/ attraction. I absolutely love that in F1 books there’s usually alot of cultural representation due to it being such a world wide sport which is true for this book. I can’t wait to read the next book in this series!

It started out AMAZING with great chemistry between Natalia and Klaus and the whole little nickname Kleine Hexe which had me cackling, I loved it. I just don't really get why we had to jump time so much because yes, I know it was a busy timing for both of them, but the on and off and the whole dancing around the fact of will they won't they was driving me crazy and all the time-jumps made it feel like their relationship was set in fragments and not something consistent which bothered me a little. The adding of Natalia's grief towards her family and Klaus losing Sofia do pull at your heartstrings and we also get to see Natalia as a people pleaser who tries to come to terms with some of her glaring red flags. All in all, it was still an entertaining read,

I definitely didn’t feel the humor in this one like I did in the first book. This was ok. I love an age gap romance, so I was excited for this…. But it kind of fell flat for me. I found myself zoning out while listening. The narrators were great, but like I said I didn’t get the comedic effect like Phae and Cos had. We’ll see how the next book goes.

Links to come.

Unfortunately, I would have a really tough time recommending this book. Despite not knowing much about F1, I was hooked from the beginning, but did find myself confused over the logistics. Little explanations of how things worked would have been helpful. I thought Natalia and Klaus had great chemistry at first and I enjoyed the tension of their reunion. However, after that, I found their behavior to be repetitive and toxic. Every single character in this story lied constantly and then was shocked when they were lied to or misled. They seemed to have no moral compass (ie: Natalia worrying about the optics of her being seen with the principal but proceeding to be seen with him anyway) or social awareness (ie: of course Klaus would withhold some information from Natalia; sure she's his girlfriend but she's also a journalist?!) and only acted for personal gain. I found their back and forth tiresome and the surprise pregnancy really irritated me. These two were openly irresponsible and Natalia, a woman in her mid-thirties, was just like "oopsie, I forgot to take Plan B but I guess this will let me keep a piece of him." Girl?!?! The time jumps and vagueness of Phaedra's situation/Cosmin was confusing as well. I haven't read Double Apex, but if the book is marketed as able to be read as a standalone, I shouldn't be outwardly confused. Anyway, I felt really jerked around by this. I love angst in a book, but there has to be emotional payoff and personal/romantic growth, and I saw none of that.

Thank you @foreverpub and @NetGalley for my copy!

This book started off strong. They had an instant attraction, and the chemistry between was sizzling. Initially I liked them together. But as time went on, I honestly didn’t care if they ended up together. There was too much back and forth, will they or won’t they. I didn’t find their love story to be believable. Lust- yes, love- no so much. Just when I thought things were back on track, here we go with the third act breakup. I wanted them to work out their trust issues and miscommunication earlier in the story. There were also too many time jumps in the storyline. Sometimes it was a few weeks, sometimes it was six months. It didn’t feel cohesive. I did enjoy that both of the characters were a part of the formula 1 world without being a driver. All of the other books I’ve read at least one character was a driver, so it was nice to see something different.

Tropes:
✔️Formula 1/sports romance
✔️Age gap
✔️Workplace - Team principal x reporter
✔️Billionaire
✔️Accidental pregnancy
✔️Dual POV