Unwrapping: Review of HOT FOR FIREMAN by Jennifer Bernard

My new found appreciation for contemporary romance is growing by leaps and bounds. Thank you, Avon Romance, for allowing me to read HOT FOR FIREMAN by Jennifer Bernard, the second book in the A Bachelor Firemen Novel series.  When I was first sent this eARC to read, I admit I was a bit dubious. A Bachelor Firemen series? Really? Well, was I in for a surprise!

Blurb for HOT FOR FIREMAN:

Katie Dane knows better than to mix business and pleasure, but her new bartender, Ryan Blake, is simply irresistible... and besides, she doesn't plan on working there much longer. That's if things go according to plan. But they never do, do they?

Ryan, the sexy heartbreaker of Station 1, is determined to rejoin the force. Tending bar in the meantime seems like the perfect idea, especially when it means he can spend his nights working next to his sultry new boss... if only the bar didn't keep catching fire.

Throw in a grizzled career criminal, a luscious-bodied barfly, a Bachelor Fireman bachelorette party, a flash-fire romance, and a million-dollar money pot, and suddenly playing with fire never seemed so much like falling in love.

                        *                          *                        *                           *                        *

Katie Dane doesn't want to run a bar, especially a run down bar named The Hair of the Dog which her father loves dearly but which nearly killed him. After her father suffers a stress-induced heart attack, Katie agrees to take over the day-to-day management of the bar until he can return to work. Little does she know that her mother has no intention of allowing her father to come back to work and her father is in no hurry to return either. Having dropped out of graduate school to help out, Katie is faced with a nearly non-existent clientele, except for the Drinking Crew as she calls them who never pay for their drinks, and a huge stack of unpaid bills. The most dooming bill is the one for a balloon payment on a million dollar insurance policy. If she doesn't pay it, The Hair of the Dog is worth absolutely nothing even if it burns to the ground.

Ryan Blake is a fireman, it's all he really knows and all he desires to be. Suspended for anger management issues, he's back in San Gabriel to ask if he might return to his job and his firefighter family at Station 1, home of the Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel. Nervous, anxious, and still not willing to admit that his temper was what caused his recklessness in the past, Ryan stops in at The Hair of the Dog for a quick drink or two before meeting with his friend and mentor, Captain Harry Brody. Little does he know that, when he walked through the door of the dilapidated looking bar, his life would change forever.

Katie knew trouble when she saw him and Ryan Blake was too good-looking and too cocky not to be trouble. She didn't need trouble when she had enough just keeping the bar going. But when her ex-boyfriend, Doug, who is working as the bouncer at the bar, finds himself unable to handle a couple of guys giving him grief at the door, Ryan steps in to rescue him. Expecting to be thanked, Ryan is caught completely off-guard when the adorable and feisty bar owner chases him out with a baseball bat. So why then, after being told by Captain Brody that he needed to think about Ryan coming back to work as a fireman, does Ryan return to The Hair of the Dog and volunteer to work as a bartender for this adorable, feisty, and totally irresistible bar owner? Only Ryan understands his attraction to Katie even as Katie is one of the non-believers.

HOT FOR FIREMAN by Jennifer Bernard is fun, witty, endearing, gentle, sweet yet steamy hot and oh, so very sexy. It's everything you want in a relationship and that's everything you get in this story. The Hair of the Dog becomes a place where you find yourself wishing you can visit and most definitely hold your bachelorette party especially if you're always guaranteed to have hot firemen do a striptease on the bartop! Wow, did that event stimulate my imagination! Thank you, Jennifer!

I highly recommend that you read HOT FOR FIREMAN by Jennifer Bernard but you'll have to wait a while as it's not releasing until May 29th but I'd definitely say put it on your TBR list. I've remarked before that I'm not a great fan of contemporary romance but I totally enjoyed this one from the first page to the last. HOT FOR FIREMAN is a delightfully fun, flirty story that teases us with spark after spark of flame-inducing steamy romance. Jennifer Bernard writes characters with depth, spirit, and humor. I'm looking forward to reading the others in the series for I sense the curse of the Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel has not yet been broken.

Happy Reading Everyone!

HOT FOR FIREMAN by Jennifer Bernard, Avon Romance, release date May 29, 2012. Available in print and ebook format.

In case you're interested, the first in the Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel Novel series is THE FIREMAN WHO LOVED ME. I haven't read it yet but if it's as good as HOT FOR FIREMAN, I'm definitely going to! It releases on April 24, 2012 from Avon, also.

Fearless, smoking hot and single: meet the Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel. These firemen might be heroes, but it's their bad luck in love that makes them legendary.

News producer Melissa McGuire and Fire Captain Harry Brody couldn't be more different, though they do have one thing in common: they're both convinced they're perfectly wrong for each other.

But when Melissa's matchmaking grandmother wins her a date with Brody at a bachelor auction... Sparks fly. Passion flares. Heat rises. (You get the picture.)

Add a curse, a conniving nightly news anchor, a stunningly handsome daredevil fireman, a brave little boy, a couple of exes, and one giant fire to the mix and Melissa and Brody's love may not be the only thing that burns.