I like authors that think outside of the sack. It’s so typical to do a series where there are a bunch of friends: Chandler, Joey, Ross, and they know these girls: Monica, Phoebe and Rachel, add romance and drama, toil and trouble… You have your players and only ONE dramatic, meaninglessly, meaningful thing can happen at a time. Reality doesn’t happen that way, but apparently fiction generally can’t multi-task. Romance series do one of two things that burn my panties: people fall in love in quick succession like they are domino pairings or for some reason unknown to me, incest via association begins to happen and everyone who enters the circle of friends is quickly paired off to someone just waiting to prove they will never fall in love; Method Story Writing 101.
Now you might want to call me on Denise A. Agnew’s Love Under Fire series and say, “Wait, Ms. Ali, aren’t these books exactly what you are bitching about?” And I will tell you to, “STFU and sit the eff down because, no, they are not.”
Wow… maybe I wouldn’t be that angry about it. I don’t think I would need to be that forceful. I would actually say, “No, you are wrong. Would you like coffee or tea? Sit the eff down, It gives me the heebs when people hover.” I don’t know what inspired the grouchiness and angst in the first comment–it must be my inner teenager. She is sometimes defensive for no reason. I blame on the Korean pop music she listens to and Hello Kitty.
Denise has done this really neat thing with this series… she has introduced three brothers and three friends who already had feelings for one another and put them in a highly volatile, very traumatic situation. While they are a convenient group of people that are all puzzled together it still comes to stand that the story is not so much a HEA (very tentatively a let’s feel it out), as it is two people coming to realize what is important to them when they find themselves most vulnerable. And they are forced to see what they value by what means makes them vulnerable and what it is they choose to protect. This isn’t a frivolous story of domino pairings and watching them fall… these people are struggling with the basic human emotion of losing something they didn’t know they had in the first place. The series is all the more impactful for the fact that you are seeing the same exact time period, series of events, people and conversations through six different pairs of eyes and emotional landscapes.
I read the first novel of this series, Sudden Heat, as a Making Love 101 novel. The interview I did with Denise at the time was really great and one of the things she had to say was how hard it was to keep the events of the stories so they overlapped and made sense. Reading Under Fire only added to the previous story and added more depth, so I believe she has done a great job and I am eagle eyed with details and the first to call bullshit on the slightest error. I am impossible to watch tv and movies with and worse when I read something. This is a solid second story and more impressive for the fact that she had to make sure that it coincided with the basis of Sudden Heat.
The series is fantab! I highly recommend these two novellas. How can you not get a little tingly thinking of military men being all bossy and military like in the face of flying bullets and feelies. ME-ow! 5 RAWRS–not that I give RAWRS.
Purchase Under Fire:
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Ellora’s Cave
Denise A. Agnew’s Web Tracks:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr | Goodreads | Amazon Author Page | Pinterest | Ellora’s Cave
Denise A. Agnew on All The Things Inbetween:
Feeling Peckish – Sudden Heat by Denise A. Agnew
He Said, She Said – Making Love 101: Denise A. Agnew
Denise A. Agnew’s Book:
Sudden Heat Synopsis:
Book one in the Love Under Fire series but can be read independently.
Where do you yearn to be in the face of danger? In the arms of a man bound to serve, to protect and to love…
Librarian Melanie Falconer knows too well the horrors of war. Military men, as far as she’s concerned, are off the marriage menu. As maid of honor at her best friend’s wedding, she makes a mall run and lands straight into the arms of seriously hot marine Matt Frasier, the best man. Matt has seen too much violence, and his heavy attraction to Melanie promises to soothe his soul and set his body on fire. Gunfire erupts, the game is on, and Melanie and Matt fight for their lives and the heat exploding between them.
Inside Scoop: The couples in the Love Under Fire series find love through the crucible of a mall shooting event.
Purchase Sudden Heat:
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Ellora’s Cave
Double Threat Synopsis:
As a therapist, Lena has worked with damaged vets—and never wants a relationship with one. As a result, her lust at first sight with sexy Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Rick Frasier is off the fulfillment menu, no matter how intriguing she finds him.
Rick has never shied from danger or risk-taking but the overwhelming attraction he feels for Lena sends him into a tailspin. As they escape a gunman intent on mayhem and battle their feelings, they’ll find there’s a firestorm of desire inside them as furious and intense as any threat.
Inside Scoop: The couples in the Love Under Fire series find love through the crucible of a mall shooting event.
Purchase Double Threat:
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Ellora’s Cave
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