Thank you to Hachette Audio, Forever, and NetGalley for the advance listener copy of Coming in Hot by Josie Juniper.

Natalia is a journalist who becomes the lead reporter of Auto Racing Journal but she has a history with one of the industry team Principal’s. Klaus, Principal of the Emerald Team, is who Natalia had a one night stand with at the beginning of the book. These two both recall that night as their careers keep them in proximity of the other.

I listened to the audiobook for Double Apex last year and was excited to see that this book would center around Natalia and Klaus. These two can’t resist coming back to each other throughout the story which is an element I enjoy in romance. Overall, this book wasn’t for me. Even though I didn’t feel this book was for me, Josie Juniper’s writing keeps me engaged until the end as to what will happen next.

I enjoyed the narrators and their narration for their respective roles. Having read an ARC and now listened to an ALC, I think there’s moments that really stick out from reading the book but there were definitely other moments that stuck out more the second time from the narrator performances. This book is a standalone but I would highly encourage reading Double Apex first to really round out your reading or listening experience.

If you enjoy a Formula 1, forbidden, age gap romance, this may be a book for you to check out.

I wanted to LOVE this. I love the racing romances but the characters felt one dimensional. There was no emotional connection between them and the pacing felt very off.

Thank you NetGalley & Hachette Audio for allowing me to listen to this ALC!
I read the first book in the series so I was curious to discover a bit more of this universe. This book opens with a bang, literally! The spicy first scene was so well-written, I was instantly hooked.
But unfortunately, the momentum didn’t last. The constant back and forth between the main characters became exhausting, and it went beyond miscommunication, it felt more like weak plotting. Some key moments, like a major fight between the FMC and her best friend, were just told in passing rather than shown, which made them feel flat despite their importance. I really wanted to love this, but it lost me halfway through.

Narration:
Speed: 1.75X
Narrators: Max Rauch and Cecily Foster have done an incredible job with this book! I particularly loved Cecily Foster's voice, very calm and velvety, honestly it was perfection! Bravo!

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 ALC! 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. Max Rauch and Cecily Foster do an ok job in this dual audiobook narration. They had decent variation from voice to voice, but I think the accents were too wildly different and fake where Max was concerned. I also think it moves a little slowly, which is surprising for an audiobook of this caliber. 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, Hachette Audio, and Forever for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.

Coming in Hot is book 2 in Josie Juniper's Frontrunners series. It follows Talia, a reporter, and Klaus, a team principal. It's an age gap and sort of forbidden romance given their jobs. They meet, and things move quickly before they realize who each other is. Their identities obviously lead to a bit of conflict throughout the story, and there's a lot of "Are we or aren't we something?"

Considering their jobs, it still felt like the F1 content was lighter in this one compared to book one. I would have liked to see more than that. They both have things in their past that they are working through independently, more effectively at some points than others. There is also an added issue in the 3rd act that is, unfortunately, one of my least favorite tropes. As soon as one event happened, I knew where things were headed. I can still see people enjoying the story if they were less invested in the F1 aspect and not bothered by the trope in question. There is also a ton of spicy spice. We get a few cameos from characters in book one, and the main story is spread out across a longer timespan through short and long time jumps.

I do think that this book would benefit from a list of content warnings at the beginning. There are several sensitive topics brought up throughout the story that people would like a heads-up on when deciding whether to read or not. This may be something that is included in the final version, but not in this ALC edition.

The audio production is done in dual narration, which is one of my preferred formats. The narrators are still able to differentiate characters within their assigned chapters. I was also able to speed it up without issue because the narrators spoke clearly.

Thanks to Hachette and NetGalley for an ALC of this audiobook for an honest review.

F1 romance
Age gap
Surprise baby

Dual narration- Max Rauch & Cecile Foster
Great narration

This was a good listen. I enjoyed it. There were predictable points but I didn’t feel like it took away from the experience. This is Book #2 Frontrunnets series can be read as a standalone but part of the book takes place in the same timeframe as book 1.

5 chapters in and I’m already kind of bored by the lack of romantic tension, and the abundance of race lingo. This one’s a miss for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for my audio arc!

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the advanced audiobook.

3.5 stars

When Natalia Evans, new journalist for American Racing Journal, meets a sexy stranger at a hotel, she thinks it'll be a night of fun and that's all (they don't even know each other's names), but later she learns that not only is the man--Klaus--also part of the Formula 1 racing world, he's the team principal for her best friend's racing team. The fact that Natalia is connected to the team through her best friend Phaedra (MC of the previous book DOUBLE APEX) and her strong writing skills mean that she and Klaus are going to get thrown together over and over. But Klaus is still getting over the death of his wife and Natalia has trust issues, ever since her parents left her with her aunt when she was little. Not to mention she's a journalist covering his team: can Natalia and Klaus get beyond reasons not to trust each other to find their HEA?

Listening to the audiobook of this novel was a great experience. The dual narrators did a nice job of keeping me engaged the whole time, which was especially important because the second half of the middle of the book got bogged down a bit by some superfluous details that didn't seem to help the pacing. Overall, this is another fun book by Josie Juniper, set in the world of Formula 1 racing, which seems to be taking over from hockey books.

Unfortunately I ended up DNF'ing this around the 20% mark. The audiobook narrators were great but the actual story felt super stiff and the time jumps every chapter were not done well.