As soon I read Double Apex (book one of the Frontrunner's series), I knew I wanted Natalia and Klaus' story. There was mystery and tension with these two characters. So, it was exciting to learn that this was book 2 of the series.

From page one, we jump into how they met and the back and forth of this relationship over approx 2ish years as they travel the F1 circuit around the world.

Things I liked:
- The title/cover
- Silver fox type MMC
- f1/stem
- romantic tension
- a follow up of a storyline from book 1 that had me intrigued

Things I didn't love:
- a bit too much on/off again
- 3rd act break up (by this point it was almost like - uff they just aren't meant to be)
- lying
- female friendship was rocky (book 1 and 2)

**potential spoilers**
There's a surprise pregnancy - which I don't necessarily loathe but with their relationship it was a bit of an eye roll and despite it being said that they weren't going to get back together "for the baby" it kinda felt that way.

3.75 ⭐ rounded up to 4⭐

Coming in Hot by Josie Juniper is the second book in the Frontrunners series.

Sadly, this book was a total miss for me. I was excited to read Klaus and Natalia’s book but it turned into a frustrating read. I didn’t enjoy the miscommunication, the very little F1 content, and the lack of character development.

Thank you Forever and NetGalley for a copy of this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I never thought I'd be into a racing romance, but decided to give this one a try and found myself SO interested into it. This just confirms that it doesn't matter the sport, sports romances will always pull me in.

Thanks so much for the gifted copy!

This is a miss for me. The FMC and her best friend are annoying, both FMC and MMC aren’t able to communicate effectively. She also gets annoyed that the people in her life are weary to say anything work related around her because of her job when it’s valid when her job literally effects theirs

It was a fun book with a flirty relationship between FmC and MMc. I was glad they finally came to their senses and found their happy ever after.

I was hesitant picking up this F1 Romance after reading reviews of the first in the series and was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this one.

Without spoilers I’ll say this includes some of my least favorite tropes and although a bit predictable at times they were done well.

Angst is a perfect word to describe Natalia in this book. I didn’t find her to be that lovable of a character but still rooted for her throughout. I’m choosing to ignore how similar I felt Klaus resembles a certain team principal because I don’t personally need to go down that rabbit hole 😜.

I appreciated how much of Josie Juniper’s love of F1 shown in this book. It’s my first time reading an F1 romance book with the team principal as the love interest and it helped the book feel unique. The brief touches on politics and running the team were fun to read as a new F1 fan.

I’ll start off my admitting I don’t know a thing about Formula 1 racing! But I don’t know much about most sports and love a good sports romance. I really like the one night stand turned more trope, so I was excited to get the ARC for this book! I’ll be honest though it wasn’t my favorite. I felt like the FMC was immature, and the interactions between the MCs could have been more. I also am not a fan of accidental pregnancy, so that put me off as well. In the end it’s not too bad of a book, but just not really for me.

3 Stars I was so excited for the second book in Josie Juniper's Frontrunners series about the members of a Formula 1 racing team, especially since I loved the first book, Double Apex. Sadly, this one was a bit of a letdown, mostly due to the characters and tropes.

Journalist Natalia Evans has reached the height of her career with a new position for Auto Racing Journal, covering Formula 1 races around the world. She gets to spend time with her best friend, Phaedra, who own a team and meet legends of the industry. The only downside of the position? One of those legends is Klaus Franke, Team Principle of Emerald, Phaedra's team, and Natalia's one night stand. Klaus is off-limits, but that doesn't stop their attraction. Widowed and burned by the press, he's hesitant to let his walls down around Natalia, both personally and professionally. With a scandal brewing in the F1 world, Natalia needs his help to cover the story, but Klaus doesn't seem keen to help. Will he ever let her in?

I love Phaedra and Cosmin's story, so I was thrilled that Natalia and Klaus were getting a book after their obvious attraction and history in Double Apex. But Coming in Hot was a bit of a letdown. There isn't as much character development as I would've liked to have seen. Both let go of their pasts to move on together, but they still don't really grow together as a couple in a healthy relationship. I also really disliked the miscommunication between the two. Or how when they decided to be completely honest with each other moving forward in their relationship, they both still kept secrets from the other. It was a frustrating read and I didn't think the "twist" for the third act was appropriate in this context, despite both being happy. There was also much less about the racing world than the first book and I'm bummed that the scandal plot fell flat. On the positive, this book kept a nice pace and covered a lot of time.

Thanks Forever for the ARC! Coming in Hot release June 17th.

1.5 stars.

"Coming in Hot" by Josie Juniper is not great at all. I tried to read the first book in this series, but I DNF'ed it. I thought that this sequel and interconnected standalone might be better than the first, but alas, it is not. I must admit, I do not know a thing about F1 racing, but I love when romance books can teach me a thing or two about a sport, like putting my baby toe in the pool to see if I am interested. If you're going to use this book to further your education about the sport of F1 racing, please look elsewhere, because barely anything F1-related happens during this story. I typically love age-gap romances featuring older people, but the characters, Natalia and Klaus, are painfully immature and cannot communicate properly to save their lives. These characters are supposed to be in their mid-30s and 40s, and they act like they are 14! I understand that Natalia has unresolved trauma stemming from abandonment issues, but she never attempts to work on them to better her relationship with Klaus. She merely brings all of those feelings into every interaction she has with him, and comes off as defensive. And Klaus sucks in his own right! He throws money at every problem to try and get them to go away. He is constantly lying to Natalia, and he hides things from here every chance he gets. He thinks he knows what is best for her when really, he's trying to save his own skin or be selfish one way or another. The characters fight and make up, fight and make up, fight and make up, and after about the 50th time, I just stopped caring??? I never, ever wanted them to be together. To make matters worse, Natalia and Klaus have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. All of the drama surrounding their "will they, won't they?" relationship is a moot point anyway because readers don't get the sense that they even *like* each other because there is no spark between them, no yearning feelings, no love between them! The pacing is awful. It goes from way too fast to snail-paced slow, to way too fast again, and back to snail-paced slow every few chapters. There are also 8000 time jumps that I couldn't accurately tell you how long the book had gone on. I appreciate the attempt to give readers some semblance of an extended time period, but having multiple weeks or months skipped every other chapter made it pointless. It's all so sloppy and choppy that, frankly, I am surprised this was greenlit for shelves. I felt like this book was actively trying to fight me every step of the way to care about it. It took everything in me to pay attention to this book while I was reading it. I will not be reading this author again. This is the second time I have attempted to do so and have been met with negative feelings each time after reading her work. I was actively angry at these characters while reading this book. It feels like this author was simply trying to capitalize on the popularity of F1 racing in the romance genre and pumped out two books really quickly without truly caring about what the substance of the story was. Please skip this one.

Thank you to NetGalley, Josie Juniper, and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.

I can only blame myself for getting confused about which F1 series this was and grabbing this book. I hated and DNFd the first one and I hated and DNFd this one too. I love F1. I understand the sport and the structure of it, but oh my god more happens in the sport than only on race weekends. That's true with this book too, but for some reason the author only wrote the race weekends so it felt like half the story was missing and we were just being told about things that happened in the in between. I don't want to be told about people falling in love, I want to see it and experience it with them, instead I felt like I was constantly playing catch up. Both Natalia and Klaus were extremely unlikeable (I don't mind this trope but there has to be something about them for me to root for or at the very leas something interesting about them and their story to keep me interested). I DNFd before the accidental pregnancy that another reviewer mentioned but holy hell, that needs a trigger warning or a mention in the blurb.

This was an amazing formula 1 romance!! I really love Josie juniper writing style! I definitely will be reading more books by her. Some tropes I loved in this book were one night stand turned more, age gap, forced proximity, and age gap

Thank you to Forever Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this title to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I will say I honestly did not enjoy the first book in this series. I didn't even finish it. I am blaming that on how it was presented but also the fact that I listened to it on audio and really didn't like the narrators. But I wanted to give this author another chance and went in with zero expectations of what I would find. I'm glad I gave it a go. This presentation was much better than her first. My search for F1 books that truly present the sport in an easy and believable fashion has been wanting. Add in romance and there's the potential for disaster if it's not done right.
Things I enjoyed in this book:
The age-gap romance. While there was a gap, I didn't feel like it was so big the characters seemed like they would never truly be together. Both characters were mature enough to know what they wanted from life and where they wanted their lives to go.
The fast but slow burn romance. Since it starts with a bang and then falls back, I needed to watch that burn and love it. I did. There was chemistry, yes, but also a connection between the characters that was palpable.
The emotional turmoil of the characters seemed on point. I felt it to my bones when they suffered and when they felt joy.
The pacing was good. I never felt like it stalled or like there were times I didn't want to continue reading. As a matter of fact, I read this title in a very short time.
Dual POV. I was happy with how it was presented. I love being in an MMCs head almost as much as an FMCs head. It was nice to have Klaus showing us who he was rather than just seeing it through Natalia's eyes.
What I didn't like:
Surprise pregnancy. Ok, I won't say I didn't like it totally. I knew it was coming. It was very obvious with how the author set up the relationship and with the conversations that were being had, I just didn't totally believe the things that happened when it was revealed.
The ending. It just kind of ends? There's no epilogue, no nothing. I feel like I was left wanting more. Wanting to know if there was a happily ever after. Wanting to know where their lives took them given their circumstances.
While there is mention of the characters from the first book, and things that happened that were important (yes I read enough of the first book to know things that were important), they are not built upon in any appropriate manner. The author assumes you've read the first book and know what happened. I needed more flashbacks so the story made sense. This elimination left plot holes. There's a ton of overlap between book 1 and 2 and it seemed the author did not care to share why it was important.
Given the characters ages, I felt like there was more drama than was necessary. For adults in their 30s and 40s, it was more like teen or young adult angst. I just didn't believe in it as much as I would have liked.
Would I recommend this book? I sure would, but only if you've read the first one so you have the background. And I recommend reading them one after the other, so the plot is not confusing or forgotten. Juniper does a better job with the F1 in this book, as well. In the first book, I felt like she shoved a lot of technical information at the reader. For someone who doesn't follow the sport, it was hard to absorb. This book was much lighter on that and easier to understand.

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the publisher, the author and Netgalley for sending an eARC my way in exchange for my honest opinion.

Unfortunately, I've found this book is not for me and I will not be finishing it, but since I did read until 50%, I'll give my opinion, however brief, and based off what I've read.

What can you expect:
One night stand turned more
Journalist and F1 team director
Age gap
Forced proximity
Open doors romance

My thoughts:
Although it started out kinda promising, from the very start I found the main characters to be quite immature. Which honestly I was not expecting, specially considering this MMC is over 40.
But even if when he tries to do things right and communicate, he ultimately allows her to take the reins and they just fall into an joint state of eternal adolescence, where they ignore their real problems, don't talk and just lust over each other and fight, over and over.
I didn't feel any sort of chemistry or tension between the two, and more often than not, I just wanted to scream at them.

The sex scenes were overall nicely done but (and this Is PURELY MY OWN OPINION, PLEASE REMEMBER THAT) could we please turn down a notch the talking? I love a man who is vocal in bed and gives praise but there's a limit and this guy was almost reciting Shakespeare to her during sex. Some might like that but for me?? It was really TOO MUCH and it made me cringe.

Lastly, the friendship dynamics between the FMC and her alleged best friend are appalling. I've never rooted less for two people to keep being friends ever.

And maybe it's because how the book is structured following the different race locations (with no actual mention of the races, drivers or anything about it except for some rare instances), so we see weeks pass by in the background, but I couldn't feel any kind of real connection to any of them. I was not invested in their stories and their constant drama was, sadly, not doing it for me.

Why????

I read Double Apex. I wasn't blown away by the whole book, but I thought that it was a decent debut. I wanted to see how Josie would grow. She...didn't. This book did not work for me.

The structure. In the first book, the romance was between a racer and an engineer. Their dynamic during races was a problem, so having the story (mostly) just from race to race made sense. We saw how they interacted during each race. What they did on and off the track. They were together for these races, and the time jump didn't feel noticeable. In this book, it's between a Team Principle and a reporter. They don't always interact one on one at a race. Therefore, not only were there time jumps, but sometimes they didn't even see each other during a chapter. It felt like they NEVER interacted. And made the weeks between feel empty. We barely got texts between them. I honestly don't know how they fell in love. I never saw it.

Plot holes. The beginning of this book relies heavily on an overlapping plot from the first book. Yet we never see those events in this book. It felt like it was assumed we would remember what happened. It's been months since I read it. And I wasn't focused on Natalia and Klaus. I was all about Phaedra and Cosmin, the MCs from that book. Why didn't we see anything? Why didn't you just skip time if you weren't going to actually write it? Mo's illness and Natalia's fight with Phae could've been skipped. Just fast forward so you can have a story solely focused on Natalia and Klaus.

Kink? Natalia tells Klaus to "make her" wear the necklace he gave her during a night together. She then says something so vague I literally could not follow, but Klaus somehow correctly interpreted that as I want you to use clothes pins as clamps for my nipples and clit. There's no negotiation. No indication that Natalia has engaged in play. Klaus admits in this POV that he's never done that. What. The. Heck. The encounter processes and includes impact with her hair brush. Which I incorrectly assumed what his hand because it's not mentioned until he's finished that he was using the hairbrush. Not a light spank mid coitus. An actual impact scene. (Though I use the term scene extremely lightly.) This added absolutely nothing to the story. This was irresponsible kink. And I felt it was poorly written.

I could go into detail on how I felt both of these characters were immature. How neither communicated effectively. How birth control was mentioned and then forgotten about. How stupid the third act breakup was. How the accidental pregnancy made me want to throw this book out the window. But...I don't want to.

This book felt rushed and under edited. I am so disappointed.

This was the first book I've read by this author, and although I power through it, I don't think this book was for me. I'm fairly new to reading F1 romance, but this book was a bit underwhelming, and I really wished for more character development while reading this, and sadly, by the end, I was left hanging. I just don't think this book was for me personally, especially since I could not connect to the characters or their story, which doesn't necessarily make it a bad book, but just not one I'd gravitate towards. Huge thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to receive an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Thank you to Josie Juniper for introducing me to F1 with Double Apex; my life will will never be the same. Since her first appearance in Double Apex, I have been dying for Natalia's story. She is such a dynamic character - her passion for her career, her showing up for the people she cares about (even when she has to risk her career to do so), and just her compassion. Klaus has an icy exterior that is a defense mechanism that Natalia is able to break down over time, which I love. They both were so patient with one another and the turmoil in their complicated relationship trying to separate work and personal. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the gifted eARC. All opinions are my own.

Instagram review will be live week of 26May25 and will be shared again closer to pub day via stories.

Josie Juniper continues to write the most authentic Formula One books in the business. With an emphasis on character development, she knows what she is talking about when it comes to the sport. This book contained a wide range of emotions with the right blend of spice and sadness in some parts. It was like receiving a nice big hug and being stabbed with raw emotional turmoil from our main characters. I couldn't help putting myself in Natalia's shoes and while you always root for the best outcome, Juniper knows that life doesn't give you the best hand most times. While some readers might be upset with the back and forth of Natalia and Klaus's back in forth relationship, I found it to be realistic and fit the storyline the best.

When Double Apex came out, I immediately sold all copies that we had and will be doing it again with Coming in Hot.

Thank you Forever publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of Coming In Hot to read and provide my honest review. After getting glimpses of Natalia and Klaus in Double Apex I was really excited to read their story. They were every bit as fiery and intense as I expected them to be. Their second (third? fourth?) chance romance (all in one book) was dramatic but entertaining. It was a very long bumpy road for these two but their happy ending did feel deserved.

I really enjoyed the dual POV and almost preferred Klaus’s chapters- there’s something about getting in the head of an mmc that I love. I also really liked the time jumps but I feel like we missed a chunk of them falling in love in the beginning. I wish we got more of that.

I adored that we got another nickname in another language - technically 2 nicknames if we count Talia. I liked how strong willed Natalia was, although her stubbornness was frustrating at times, but I can’t say I wouldn’t have acted and felt the way she did when dealing with conflicts. I also really liked how Klaus was a bit older than Talia but it didn’t become the whole plot/conflict/center of everything. Nothing was taboo which I liked.

I need to read more F1 books because I really have been enjoying these. I felt like I was living vicariously through the characters with all of the travel to these beautiful places. I’m glad we got Klaus and Natalia’s story, and I’m looking forward to reading Sage’s.

I had zero expectations towards this book, but I was hooked from the first chapter 🤭 I just didn’t want to put it down and read the whole thing in one day🙈

I truly enjoyed the whole F1 set-up, can’t say I’m a huge fan, but definitely had visited a couple of races and it was so cool to see all the familiar locations as the premises of the main story.

Josie writes the main characters so well, you just start caring about them immediately; they’re flawed but lovable, and the spice is delicious.

Oh and I haven’t read the first book in the series, but I definitely will now🤩

DNF'd at 70%
The pacing was very disjointed, the location hops meant nothing to me, I wasn't even really sure what Natalia's job entailed, and I did not feel any connection between Natalia and Klaus. I usually love a dual POV, but this one did not really give us any more character development or even likable characters.
I got the gist of the end of the book from my buddy reader, and I'm okay with not finishing it for myself. I think I would have been even more frustrated.
Sorry that this one wasn't for me and thanks for the ARC, Forever.