Guest Review: Hidden Fire *Jo Davis*

Kati from Adventures in Katidom reviews Jo Davis's Hidden Fire...

The scorching hot firemen of Station Five are known for cranking up the heat. Sexy rogue Julian Salvatore is no exception…

We first met Julian Salvatore in Jo Davis’s first Firefighters of Station Five book, Trial by Fire. From what we know, Julian is a ladies’ man, one who women love and who doesn’t seem to take much in life seriously. The firefighters of Station Five tolerate Julian because he’s a good firefighter, but he spends a lot of time acting irresponsibly outside of work, and that gets frustrating for them. What they don’t know is that Julian is hiding a horrible secret from his childhood, he was drugged and might have been sexually molested. When he meets Grace McKenna, a successful attorney, he is immediately smitten. Grace, however, has no interest in getting involved with anyone, despite her attraction to Julian, she he holds him off.

Julian accepts that Grace isn’t interested, but he can’t help but warn her off when he discovers that she’s defending the man who was part of his childhood abuse. Grace absolutely does not appreciate Julian’s interference, but his insistence that the guy she’s defending is dangerous makes her antennae go up. Soon she comes to appreciate Julian’s care and begins to consider acting on her long standing attraction to him. What neither of them realize is that Julian is inadvertently going to be caught up in the sadistic plans of Grace’s client, who may or may not be tied to a series of grisly murders taking place locally. As Grace and Julian spend more time together, Grace begins to realize that Julian is not quite the playboy she thought him to be. Oh sure, he’s got experience, but at his heart he is a sweet man who desperately wants and deserves to be loved.

I’ll be honest, I strongly disliked the second in the Firefights of Station Five books, Under Fire. So, I read this one with trepidation. I wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy the third book. But Jo Davis manages to create in Julian an incredibly appealing hero who is troubled, and protective, dominant, and sweet. And Grace is a heroine with some backbone. She stands up to him when he tried to maneuver her into doing things she doesn’t want to. And she pushes at him to lower his barriers and let her in, so that their relationship can continue to bloom. Davis continues to have a deft hand creating some very hot love scenes that are erotic and emotional. My niggle with the book (and with the other two as well) is that at times the “conflict” feels forced and over the top. The bad guys aren’t just bad, they’re EEEEVIL. And at times it induces eye rolling from me. I think the book is at its best when the story focuses on the relationship between the hero and the heroine. As romantic suspense, this book would grade in the C-/D+ range. But as a contemporary romance, it grades higher because of the likeable hero and heroine.

Final grade: B-/C+