Slow Burn - Book Review

By Pamela Clare

Synopsis

Victoria Woodley is done with men. Fresh off a dating nightmare, she flies from her home in Chicago to Scarlet Springs to take part in her best friend’s wedding. Who picks her up at the airport? Eric Hawke. Of course. She made a fool of herself over him last time she was here. He’s cocky, charming, and sexy as sin. But the fact that she’s attracted to him is all the proof she needs that he’s bad news. She would ignore him if she could. But he’s the best man, and she’s the maid of honor. She can’t just tell him to jump in a lake—especially not when her lips are locked with his.

Eric isn’t looking for a relationship. Between running the firehouse and volunteering for the county’s search and rescue team, he has enough on his plate. He doesn’t need to get tangled up with a woman from the big city, especially one whose idea of roughing it is going without designer coffee. Yet from the moment he looks into Victoria’s big brown eyes, the attraction he feels is too strong to deny. Faster than he can imagine, the spark of desire that has smoldered between them since the first day they met will flare into full-blown passion.

But can Eric convince Victoria to set aside her doubts and trust him with her heart before their time together runs out?

Review

I enjoyed SLOW BURN, which is the second book in the Colorado High Country series. The prologue is a unseen scene from the first book, which shows us how Eric and Vic first met. After that, the story starts back up again one year after their first encounter and mostly takes place in the span of a week. Because of that timeframe, I’d classify this as an insta-love.

I liked Vic, who is a smart and generous woman. She’s also beautiful and rich, which are the two things that ended up causing her a lot of pain and suffering throughout the past year. She’s struggling to overcome the fear that now plagues her, while learning to trust men again. I think what I liked most about her was that she didn’t bend over backwards to win her family’s approval back. I prefer to see a person cut toxic people out of their lives rather than clinging on to hope, so I loved that when she needed her family the most and they let her down, she cut them out of her life. As with the first book, this story focuses more on Vic than on Eric, so I can’t say too much about him, other than he’s a really nice guy who is very good to his mother. Oh, and he’s a firefighter. Do you really need to know anything else?

SLOW BURN is told in dual POVs and while it’s part of a series, it can be read as a stand-alone. It also comes with a nice HEA for Eric and Vic. Thankfully, there wasn’t anywhere near the amount of technical talk as there was in the first book, but there are still a lot of characters running around that are hard to keep track of. As with the first book, there are a couple of I-Team character cameos, but again, you don’t need to read their stories. At this stage, I have no idea who will get the next book, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.