Coming in Hot returns to the world of The Frontrunners series, this time focusing on journalist Natalia and team principal Klaus. When the two of them meet, sparks fly. Yet when Klaus realizes Natalia is a journalist, he is horrified. Can Natalia and Klaus learn to navigate their professional and personal relationships together? Or is their race over before it begins?

Coming in Hot is a fast-paced and bingeable read. Natalia and Klaus have good chemistry, but also have very real obstacles in their way. Natalia is a committed journalist and has a real passion for uncovering meaningful stories. Klaus is dealing with holding a team together and keeping everything running behind the scenes. The book is set over a long period of time, so I struggled with the pacing a bit at times.

It will be helpful to have read book one, but you can still enjoy this book as a standalone. Coming in Hot didn’t have quite as much focus on the actual F1 racing as I was expecting, but that makes sense since both Klaus and Natalia deal heavily with the press side of it. Without spoilers, I didn’t love the thing that drew Klaus and Natalia together in the end (just not my favorite trope!). I still enjoyed Coming in Hot and am looking forward to other books in the series.

Thank you to Josie Juniper, Forever, and NetGalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc.

This book was okay, I had trouble connecting with the characters and I didnt care for the writing. The plot was good and their dynamic was good. It just wasnt my cup of tea!

I feel like I had so many mixed feelings throughout this book. At times, I was fully immersed in the story, but at other points I had trouble forcing myself not to skim read because it seemed like there were so many names and so much information to keep up with.

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The FMC, Natalia is a journalist and lead reporter for Auto Racing Journal. Klaus, the MMC is the Team Principal of one of the racing teams.

After one hot night with a stranger, Natalia moves on with her life… only to realize that the man she spent the evening with was none other than the principal of a major team she would be writing about during the F1 season. Trying to keep things professional gets hard because of the feelings both of them caught on the first night, and they soon become wrapped up in each other. That is until secrets are uncovered, feelings are violated, and trust is broken.
Will these two come out together in the end, or will the secrets that threaten them separate them for good?

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There were multiple reasons this book just didn’t do it for me. One of the main reasons being the time gaps between each chapter. A few aren’t bad but they really started to bug me because I’m very much so a girl who loves the in between details and I feel like I missed out on so much every time I saw “2 weeks later, 3 weeks later” or even “6 months later.”

I really didn’t like the relationship between the FMC and her best friend. It just seemed very toxic, and even though things got better toward the end, I just simply didn’t care for it. The bestie almost made me want to set the book down and not finish it.

I also had a hard time understanding Natalia. She just struck me as very immature and sensitive… because people wouldn’t give her information and she felt left in the dark. Which granted… SHE IS LITERALLY A JOURNALIST. She should be used to that. The way she pretty much threw fits when she didn’t get her way drove me crazy.

Overall I give the book 2 ⭐️. Not the worst I’ve come across, but I probably won’t read any more in the series.

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A huge thank you to NetGalley, Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and Josie Juniper for allowing me to read this arc. These are all my honest opinions in this review.

Sometimes a book just doesn't grab you, no matter how much you try and wanted it to.. And this is what happen with this book. I've tried a few times to read this book, but just couldn't get into it, so I ended up DNF. The time jumps made things clunky and really affected the flow of the story, and just made me lose interest.

I guess it just wasn't for me, and I don't want to force it more than I already have., as I think it would do the book a disservice.

Unfortunately I don't think this is the f1 romance author for me. Or maybe I just don't enjoy f1 romances.

I binged the first two books in this series on audio. I truly just didn't feel connected to the main characters in these books. I thought the males were kind of flat and just not interesting. Maybe they compared too much to drivers who don't peak my interest. Equally I thought the females just fell flat. For me in a romance if the characters don't appeal the story just does not quite appeal to me unfortunately because romance books are so character driven.

I was so excited for a new racing book. F1 is so fascinating to me to read (not watch). But this book just did not work for me in many levels and it hurts me to give this book o my 2 stars but I almost DNF’d it.

The constant time and location jumps 2 weeks, a month, a few days made the story just spin and spin. We do NOT need a time jump and a new city every freaking chapter! We get hardly anything of their relationship building except snippets of they shared lots of texts and phone calls. Why don’t we get to read one of these! I need more than they talked about lot on the phone to invest in a couple. All we get an immature behaviors from both MC’s in their relationship as well as our FMC acting like a child to her supposed best friend including the silent treatment. All the side drama also took away from the main plot and helped with the spinning wheels of the story instead of smooth runway

Overall some people will find that this book is right up their ally and kudos to them for loving this book. For me it just didn’t work.

I feel like this book had a lot of potential but the end product was okay. The time jumps were annoying because it felt like I was being told what was happening instead of seeing it. I liked the chemistry between the characters and it was fun to see Phae and Cosmo. Narrators did a great job.

I received an arc from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Did not finish at 33%.
This just wasn’t for me unfortunately. The relationship is quite toxic from early on, not to mention the FMC and her best friend’s toxic relationship. The FMC’s journalistic integrity is immediately compromised as soon as she is involved with this man. Maybe 20% in and she already says she will avoid saying bad things about the MMC on YouTube. She also accepts a massive necklace from him and he constantly talks about how she’s press and can’t be trusted. The time jumps mean I have absolutely no connection to the characters at all, we are just told about events that happened in the gaps. How am I supposed to have a connection when I’m just being told “oh yeah in the last 2 weeks we FaceTimed every night” or “in the last 6 months me and my best friend made up.”

I'm really enjoying formula one romance and I liked that this story had a little bit of a different spin to it. Natalia and Klaus are not involved directly with the racing, as in driver, mechanic, or coach, and it was interesting to see a different side of that world. I also liked that they spent time apart during their romantic journey and the reasons for the push and pull added an extra layer of depth to their eventual happily ever after. The audiobook, narrated by Max Rauch and Cecily Foster, is a fabulous way to get fully immersed in this incredible love story.

DNF 32 %

This book did not work for me. I couldn't connect with the characters, and the writing style was very difficult to follow. The dialogue was weak and pointless, making the main male character seem old. The relationship they were having wasn't a pleasant one either.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

I came into this book without having read Juniper's previous Formula One romance, but I found that I had no problem following the plot and getting to know the characters. Autoracing journalist Natalia and team principal Klaus have a one night stand at Grand Prix, and struggle to balance falling in love with working on opposing sides of a podium.

This book had a lot of subplots, a few of which I really loved. I loved a plot about Formula One teams debating whether to add another circuit to the race calendar in an unnamed dictatorship - this is the first Formula One romance I've read that even mentions that there are many debates on how Formula One adds money and legitimacy to oppressive regimes. I also really enjoyed a lot of the side characters - Josie's best friend, owner's daughter Phae, female racer Sage and magazine boss Nefeli. I wish we had gotten more time for those connections to breathe.

I admit, I never felt like I quite got a read on Klaus. There are mentions of his childhood in Austria, but less specificity about him as an Austrian. At no point do we understand why he is so attached to Natalia and when a major twist happens, I realised I had no idea what his reaction was since I didn't feel like I knew him.

While this book didn't land with me, I loved that Juniper is writing in this Formula One space, and I hope to see more from her.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for this ARC.

I was not aware that this was the second book when I requested it, so I have not read the first. Will I go back? Ehhh, if I do it’s not high on my priority list.

I have conflicting feelings about this book. I really enjoyed the premise of it, and was looking forward to reading it. I really wanted to love it. But, I felt indifferent to the characters. I had to remind myself that I was even reading it. I am honestly disappointed - I enjoy so many of the tropes this book has but it just was not hitting the mark.

I like that this was a romance in a sports setting, but neither one of the characters were athletes themselves. The idea of a journalist and a billionaire team principle being in a romantic relationship is interesting. Having to toe the line between pillow talk about work and still keeping things professional and secretive. But, the FMC and MMC were just foolish a lot of the times? They would hide things that they knew would hurt the other if kept hidden.

I haven't read anything from this author before, and i enjoyed it. usually the dead wife trope can be a hit or miss for me but i felt like this one was done well. i loveeee an age gap/forbidden romance and that's one of the reasons i was so excited to read this.

⭐💫

TROPES
🥃 Age Gap
🥃 Workplace Romance
🥃 Sports (Formula 1) Romance
🥃 Found Family
🥃 Accidental Pregnancy
🥃 Dual POV

While I enjoyed the first book in the series, I felt there was a significant lack of character development. Going into this second book, I was hopeful because of the dynamic in this story that there would be improvement in that department, and I was left incredibly disappointed.

Coming in Hot is trying so hard to be too many things. I think the overall plot structure set the story up for failure from the beginning. We have what could be a full length story within the first 25% of the book, which then leaves the rest floundering and me as the reader trying to figure out what the intention is. It isn’t unpredictably fun, it’s just confusing. And, because character development was again shafted to the final 5% of the narrative, Natalia’s decisions never made sense.

There was an effort to include significant themes like grief regarding parental abandonment, but because we are constantly being told things after the fact, like weeks to months later, rather than experiencing them with the character, none of it makes the emotional impact it intended to. And, though this is technically a dual POV story, Klaus’s chapters are so few and far between that they don’t add anything. I was left in the dark in the weirdest way and “surprising” reveals just came off as odd, since the natural progression or development for them was non-existent.

Frankly, I’m bummed. As I become more interested in Formula 1, and as someone in journalism, I was excited for this book, and it let me down. There are so many important themes trying to come to the surface here, and none of them land due to the plot structure.

⭐⭐.5 | 🌶️🌶️🌶️ | When the pit stop lasts longer than the race
This F1 romance follows journalist Natalia Evans who finds herself covering the very racing world where Klaus Franke—her mysterious one-night stand—now reigns as an enigmatic Team Principal. Their forbidden workplace romance unfolds against high-stakes racing drama and industry scandal.

I really wanted this to sweep me off my feet, but it left me feeling like I was stuck in traffic when I should have been flying around the track. I usually don't mind age gaps in romance, but something about Klaus and Natalia's dynamic just didn't work for me—I can't quite put my finger on why this one felt off when others haven't.

The constant time jumps killed any romantic momentum, and both characters felt frustratingly underdeveloped. Klaus's controlling tendencies overshadowed his appeal, while the promised scandal felt more like background noise than explosive drama. Sometimes a book just doesn't align with your reading mood.

Vibes We Are Tracking
🏁 Formula 1 setting
💼 Workplace forbidden romance
🌙 One night stand to more
👥 Age gap that hits different
🔥 Secret relationship tensions

3⭐, 3🌶️

Oui vey....I wasn't a fan of the first book in this series and unfortunately this book did not wow me either. I loved the premise of getting an F1 romance for a team principal, but I felt like we barely got the team principle aspect of it? The drama came from randoms bits of information that just did not intrigue me at all, and sadly, I couldn't get invested in the romance between Klaus and Natalia...like I'd bet they break up in the next two years after this book.

The relationships throughout this book were all around frustrating. I know this is supposed to be a play on the "drive to survive"/ "cut or be cut" mentality of F1, but I just can't get over the shitty friendship between Natalia and Phaedra (book one highlighted it and this book reminded me how grumpy it made me). Klaus always making decisions for Natalia was frustrating, and then how the book ends for their careers....was interesting.

The time jumps were.....for lack of a better word, a stupid choice. I get it, race weekends are spread out, but the gaps for the relationship were driving me crazy with noooo explanation why they were always so fine going weeks without communicating, and then just jumping back into the relationship. A lot of things occurred off page during these gaps and choosing to just summarize what happened was a choice I as a reader did not like reading.

💛F1 Romance
💜Secret Relationship
💙One Night Stand
💜Age Gap

Thank you Netgalley and Hachette Audio/ Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for an ALC/eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

A spicy F1 age gap romance with A LOT of drama!

While neither MC is an F1 driver, they both are deep into the world as Klaus is the Team Principal & Natalia is a lead reporter for Auto Racing Journal. While their first hook-up was an accident, after getting to know one another, feelings grow fast which complicates both of their careers.

While I don’t know much about F1, I did feel like the author did a good job of making it feel authentic and gave details that I believe fans of F1 and newbies will all enjoy. I loved the drama that their workplace relationship added and was thrilled when one of my favorite tropes was revealed at the end!

Thank you Forever, Josie Juniper, & Netgalley for the ARC!

I'm sorry to say that this book was just a miss for me. I'm rating this a 3 star because it was fine, it was a new genre for me when it comes to f1 and racing, but the characters, the writing style, the pacing, all of it was just not my taste.

It was really hard for me to root for the love interest, I don't mind an age gap, but the way the MMC was written felt really toxic and how he spoke felt forced. The relationships the FMC have are not satisfying, it felt like she has absolutely no support system, her relationship with her supposed best friend which was highlighted most after the love interest was horrible. These characters all felt very surface level, shallow, and not anyone I would root for. Lastly, with all the time jumping just didn't help the plot or development of a believable love story to me.

Thank you Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Coming in Hot by Josie Juniper
Frontrunners series #2. Contemporary sports romance. Can be read as a standalone but characters from the first series are peripherally part of this story.
Natalia Evans has been a journalist for years. She’s now reporting for Auto Racing Journal and traveling around the world following the Formula 1 circuit, drivers, and related business moguls. One of those business legends is Klaus Franke, the Emerald Team Principal. They had a steamy encounter before working together. Can they keep their passions under wraps? Would it cause a scandal if they got together during the season?


🎧 I alternated between an ebook and audiobook which was narrated by Cecily Foster and Max Rauch. Both performed with excellent emotion and clarity. The first person POV was easy to follow with chapter headings for each which weren’t really needed for the audiobook but great for following along with a print version. Steamy scenes were all one POV based on the chapter and has me lowering the volume just in case. I listened mostly at 1.5 to more closely match my reading speed.
The characters were performed vividly and brought a picture to mind that I wouldn’t have gotten because of the accents. A wonderful way to read this book.

High angst and high steam. I’m not a huge fan of couples or friends arguing but some relationships are just that way.
I’m enjoying the expanded sports worlds available in reading these days.

I received a copy of this from NetGalley and publisher Hachette Audio.

Josie Juniper has done a fantastic job with her sophomore book in the Frontrunners series!

Featuring journalist Natalia and team principal Klaus, this age gap (30s/mid-40s), touch of forbidden/scandalous romance dives you into the fast-paced world of F1 racing. It somewhat overlaps with the first book in the series, so make sure you read that one first! Natalia and Klaus are both strong characters, driven by ambition - and like all of us, make mistakes. I adored their push and pull throughout the story - which covers a few years in time. I highly recommend this one to fans of a spicy sports romances, and cannot wait for book three!

I received an advanced reading copy, receipt of which did not impact my review.