Reviewed by Kimberley

TITLE: Set Ablaze

SERIES: Uniform Encounters 1

AUTHOR: Morticia Knight

PUBLISHER: Totally Bound

LENGTH: 189 pages

BLURB:

Eric is a fire chief in Mesa, Arizona where he’s lived all of his life. A hunky Norse god like man, he has finally come out of the closet after twenty years of marriage. Now his wife hates him, his son won’t speak to him, a town crazy wants him fired, and there’s a rash of arson fires destroying some of the beautiful historic homes in the area. To let off steam, he’s been tempted to explore his long repressed sexuality with his son’s twenty year-old friend.

Tom, a twenty-eight year-old fire-fighter from Texas, is desperate to get away from his dad’s prejudice about his sexuality, and an unstable relationship that just recently ended. He takes a temporary position in Mesa where he sets eyes on the most gorgeous male specimen he’s ever seen in the form of the fire chief, Eric Anderson. Convinced the chief is straight, he accidentally catches him one night with a young guy, and is now determined to let the chief know he’s interested.

Eric is adamant that they can only be friends, even though he finds the sweet young Tom adorable. The pressures on Eric increase as his ex-wife becomes a suspect, and the town crazy tries to blame the arson fires on him. Will he allow himself to find real love with the sexy Tom, or will his world be destroyed by all of the city’s accusations and his family’s lack of acceptance?

REVIEW:

Every now and then, I’ll read something from a particular author and enjoy their work to the point where I will start to seek out more of their work. This is one of those instances. I loved these characters. Here you have Eric who is a somewhat buttoned up fire chief newly divorced from his wife after he revealed to her that he was gay. He’s a father of an adult son and his life is a bit lonely. This man is by no means perfect; he is this flawed man who has made mistakes in his life and the only thing he could do at this point is live with them and try to make them right. He thought he was doing the right thing by being honest with his wife but of course in the process ends up hurting her. He understood this, and worked hard to try to do right by his wife and his son even though her bitterness makes it difficult for him to do so at times. He understood that by revealing his sexuality, he was going to ruin his marriage but he could not live a lie anymore. He’s made mistakes and is trying to make up for them. Even though you understood that his ex wife was hurting and bitter, her attitude and the way she poisoned her son against him made it difficult for me to feel any sympathetic for the ex-wife. And the son to me was equally an ass but I understood that both of these characters’ actions came from feeling hurt and betrayed.

Then there is Tom, a 28-year-old man who’s quite mature for his age actually, who is looking for that one person to love and who loves them back. Tom is lonely as well, and decided to make a fresh start after his grandmother passed away.  He moves to Mesa after he is offered a job in the fire department and it’s instant attraction with them falling in love soon after. These two men have quite a bit in common and it’s because of this you don’t mind the age gap. In fact the age gap wasn’t even noticeable because Tom’s character was so mature.

The writing was spot on perfect for me: it wasn’t sappy, it wasn’t ridiculous or anything like that. There were an entire cast of background characters that introduced seamlessly into the story. The sex was hot and tastefully written; there were no crude or childishly vague words to describe body parts or ridiculous dialogue to accompany the sex scenes. The mystery and events surrounding the arson was well played, Knight didn’t drag it out or sensationalize it. I also like how she choose to end the book. The HFN ending was more realistic than it would have been had it been a HEA. I feel that by the way she did she left it open for us to go back and revisit the unresolved issues between his ex-wife and son. Looking forward to reading more about these men.

Rating:  

Totally Bound

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