April TBR Challenge 2016 – Taking the Heat by Victoria Dahl

Topic: Contemporary

Passion this hot can’t be faked…

All revved up for bright lights and steamy nights, writer Veronica Chandler chased her dreams to New York City. When she hit a dead end, reality sent her back home to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Saving her pride and her new gig—writing a relationship advice column!—requires some faking. No one can know the truth about her big-city flop or her nonexistent sex life. But the town’s irresistibly rugged librarian is determined to figure her out… and give her hands-on lessons in every wicked thing she wants to know.

Gabe MacKenzie’s heart might be in Wyoming, but secretly his future’s tied up in his family’s Manhattan legacy. Getting down and dirty with Veronica is supposed to give him a few memorable nights—not complicate his plans. But the thing about heat this scorching is there’s just no going back… and it might be too hot for either of them to take.

I don’t read a ton of contemporary, but some way, somehow, this was the series that reminded me about libraries, and got me into borrowing ebooks from the library.

I’ve enjoyed this series because it is about grown-ups, about women I could see being friend with and going out for a Girl’s Night with. But this particular book, it felt a little NA. We have two main protagonists who while a little older than the NA crowd, are still desperately trying to figure out their futures, and not being honest with their families or themselves about what they want.

The only thing that saved it for me was that it was punny and the banter was hilarous and dorkily hot. Plus, hunky male librarian? Yeah, that will cover a host of sins, including said hunky librarian being a lying, misrepresenting, polecat.

But the “Girls” are still a ton of fun and I can absolutely imagine girl’s night out with the bunch of them. The only problem is there’s not more page time with them.

What makes this story though is Veronica, she starts out so timid and afraid and SHE decides to grow and change and implements everything on her own and for herself. But since we readers already know that Gabe is a lying, misrepresenting, polecat, it just makes it kind of awful in a lot of instances.

In the end we have the power of love and change and the story was left on a we’re giving this a chance and not declarations of undying love and matrimony. So it DOES work, it just wasn’t completely successful for me. But it was well written, often very funny, ans the sex scenes were delightfully realistic (for the most part). It is worth the read if you are a fan of the series, but while it probably could be read as a stand alone, I don’t advise it because I don’t think it is the best of the bunch. Start with the first novella, it is the best.

I don’t know if this is the end of the series or not, but since I am still holding out for Jill’s book, I’m not marking this as a closed/ended series.