by Kathryn Shay
Book 5, in The Rockford Fire Department Series
"All I Need"
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Suspense.
Price: $4.99 ebook (at time of post)
He's a fire chief who curses out the mayor at every turn. She's the mayor who needs him in a crisis.
He's a line firefighter attracted to the mayor's daughter. She's a woman who wants nothing to do with a man like him.
Chief Chase Talbot has butted heads with Mayor Vanessa Jordan since she was elected to office two years ago. And since he's the head of the fire department, she's his boss. Still, he takes no grief from her. But after a fire involving her parents, Vanessa turns to Chase for help. When the situation calms down, both are unable to get their relationship back to what it was. Throw in troubled teens, estrangement from family, a possible arson and you get a complex, gripping plotline and an emotional and scintillating love story.
Interweaved with Chase and Vanessa's lives is Joe Santori, the young, brash and immature firefighter of book one. Now Joe is a wiser, more settled lieutenant running his own crew. When Holly Michaels, a fourth grade teacher, and the mayor's daughter, moves into the condo next to his, she intrigues him. But Holly doesn't want to get involved: Joe is worldly, gorgeous and way out of her league. The problem is, he doesn't think so. These young people go on a rollercoaster ride of emotional highs and lows, but even after they give into their passion, the old Joe resurfaces and Holly's having none of it.
It comes as a shock to both couples that contrary to what each thought, they don't have all they need!
Cameo appearances of readers' favorite firefighters from Hidden Cove, as well as Shay's trademark tense and nail-biting rescue scenes, sizzling sexual encounters, and emotions exploding on every page, this book will pull you in and not let go until the characters find their way back to each other.
If you haven't read the first four books of The Rockford Fire Department, be sure to grab FEEL THE HEAT, RISKING IT ALL, CODE OF HONOR and NEVER FAR AWAY, all intense firefighter romance books.
*** NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Kathryn Shay spent five years riding fire trucks with a large city fire department, eating in their firehouses and interviewing hundreds of America's Bravest.***
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My Thoughts: It’s Gettin' Hot In Here!
Being from California, specifically SoCal, where fire season is a common reality, I’ve grownup with a high respect and admiration for firefighters and I absolutely love how real this author keeps the drama and characters. Now I read this novel unknowing that it was number 5 in a series and I must say I felt a tad out of place at parts but was able to read through it as a standalone.
Set in the Rockford Fire Department world, there are many past characters and new ones introduced to readers. For the most part there are two couples whom the story is focused on:
Mayor Vanessa Jordan wasn’t elected to make friends but to run an efficient city government. So when Fire Chief Chase Talbot tries to help her during a personal family crisis involving her estranged family; Vanessa finds herself lightening up in her business dealings. Vanessa can’t help but worry if the attraction she’s starting to feel for the causal but gentleman Chase is causing her to become soft.
Holly Michaels, in a near state of shock rushed to a fire involving her grandparents only to find them take to he hospital. Luckily for Holly a FD Lieutenant, Joe Santoria, was on site and drives her to the hospital. It’s there in the waiting room they discover their condo neighbors and that Holly is the Mayor’s daughter. After the doctor speaks to Holly and estranged family reunions are made; Holly and Joe part but not for long, as neither can stop thinking of the other. From then on it’s clear sparks are flying but who will be the first to say yes?
Overall, good read and very intense at times. I enjoyed the scenes with the firefighters in action as so many other romance books leave that part out but clearly you can almost feel the moments here. The characters were great and each had their own personalities and perhaps if I’d been into the series before I read this book I might have enjoyed having so many people in the book, but sadly I felt overwhelmed at times by the sheer number of people mentioned in each chapter I almost wanted a cast listing for reference. Having two main couples to develop in a book is a lot but luckily because the couple turn out alright despite some major bumps, bullets, stubbornness and elections. So if you like firefighters and strong headed woman going toe to toe till they makeup or breakup then this book is one to read.
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A NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestselling author, Kathryn Shay has been a lifelong writer and teacher. She has written dozens of self-published original romance titles, print books with the Berkley Publishing Group and Harlequin Enterprises, and mainstream women’s fiction with Bold Strokes Books. She has won five RT Book Reviews awards, four Golden Quills, four Holt Medallions, the Bookseller’s Best Award, Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year, and several “Starred Reviews.” Her novels have been serialized in COSMOPOLITAN magazine and featured in USA TODAY, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, and PEOPLE magazine. There are over seven million copies of her books in print, along with three million downloaded online. Reviewers have called her work “emotional and heart-wrenching.”
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author L. P. Dover is a southern belle living in North Carolina with her husband and two beautiful girls. Before she began her literary journey she worked in periodontics, enjoying the wonderment of dental surgeries.
