Hot for the Fireman

• Author: Gina L. Maxwell
• Genre: Romance
• Publication Date: May 31, 2022
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc.
• Series: Boston Heat #1

Ex-Army Ranger Erik Grady lives for the job. So when his chief at the Boston Fire Department offers him two choices—mandated therapy for supposed PTSD or a permanent desk job at the station, he reluctantly agrees to see a shrink. Only this doctor is unlike anything he expected. Female and curved in all the right places? Check. Hotter than a four-alarm fire? Check. The kind of woman that can heat his blood in and out of bed? Check, check. And oh, yeah, he just happens to have first hand experience…

Of all the men to walk into psychologist Olivia Jones’ office, why did it have to be him? Her one-night stand isn’t playing by the rules of just. One. Night. She’s had her heart broken in the past, and no way is she going there again. And now he’s blackmailing her into three dates? Well, if that’s what it takes to make him see a different therapist, fine. She can handle it. So what if the chemistry between them is combustible? She’s a professional, damn it. She’ll date Mr. I’m Too Sexy For My Bunker Pants. But it won’t end in the fun he expects.

It’s time to see how much heat this fireman can take…

I first came across Gina L. Maxwell through some interactions on what was then-called twitter. One of my really good friends loves romance novels, and although I was a little nervous to pick up another romance (after having read a 90s cheesy romance novel or seven that was basically just all sex and no plot), I was willing to take a recommendation, and it turned out to be one of Gina’s books. I fell in love with her writing and have been working my way through her long list of published works. My library hold for the audiobook came in at just the right time, and I couldn’t miss the chance to dive into a new one of her series. 

You can say that I was already primed to love this book, but it far exceeded my expectations. After having already read a handful of Gina’s books, she consistently makes each story fresh and wonderful in completely different ways. Her writing is never formulaic, and this one shows her range at writing contemporary romance. 

We get to hear from both Erik and Olivia, and I loved seeing each of them work through their interactions as well as their own internal demons. After cutting loose for one night of fun, Erik wakes up who can’t think of anything but the incredible woman he shared a night with, while Olivia is mortified to discover that her one-night stand has appeared at her office the next day. In a stunningly unexpected scene, Olivia explains that she cannot treat him after having had a one-night stand due to moral and ethical obligations. Unexpected because this is something that the vast majority of books featuring therapists—and it drives me up the wall to see the field of mental health care portrayed so incorrectly so often. But Gina got it right and created a situation where therapy sessions are about what I’d expect, and are conducted by ethical mental health professionals. 

Once Olivia has passed off Erik’s care to one of her colleagues, she quickly finds herself  agreeing to three dates with him. And over the course of the story, both characters allow themselves to get to know each other, and start to tentatively open up. Both Erik and Olivia have experienced some pretty significant losses—Olivia with the end of a relationship, and Erik with his PTSD, and over the course of the book, they start to work through things both separately and together. 

One of Maxwell’s strengths is her ability to write characters that leap off the page. Both the main characters, and all the side characters were so realistic and well-rounded. I especially loved how the friendship between Olivia and her best friend Angie, which feels an awful lot like the friendship I have with my own besties. Don’t worry, Erik isn’t left out in the cold. He has his brothers from the military, and they work together at the Boston Fire Department, and I loved the banter between the guys. It sounds so realistic, and I love that there’s such a lot of found family in this book.

My favorite thing about her books is that I can never figure out which I like more: the plot or the romance. I still can’t decide, because they’re both so good. In this book, there’s so much going on that I was constantly very invested in what was going to happen next. The romance is top-notch, and the book is pretty spicy, and I shipped this couple so much. 

Overall, this is so much more than ‘just a romance.’ There are deeper themes addressed in the story that makes this so believable, with characters working through trauma, grief, and guilt, and it is not only done realistically, it was also written incredibly sensitively. Narrators Avery Reid and Aiden Snow do incredible portrayals of Olivia and Erik, and I have to admit that Aiden Snow’s voice is so sexy that I could listen to him recite a grocery list and still hang on every word. So all in all, this is a great read and I can easily recommend it to anyone who: likes reading romance, thinks that they don’t like reading romance because they just haven’t found one that isn’t cringeworthy, enjoys characters that read as realistic, and wants to jump into a riveting story from start to finish.

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