Reviewed by Louisa
TITLE: Fire and Hail 
SERIES: Carlisle Cops: Book Five
AUTHOR: Andrew Grey
NARRATOR: Randy Fuller
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 6h 29m
RELEASE DATE: March 23rd 2017
BLURB:
Brock Ferguson knew he might run into his ex-boyfriend, Vincent Geraldini, when he took his first job as a police officer in Carlisle. Vincent’s attitude during a routine traffic stop reminds Brock why their relationship didn’t last.
What Brock doesn’t expect is finding two scared children in the trunk of a Corvette. He’s also surprised to learn the kids’ mother is Vincent’s sister. But his immediate concern is the safety of the two children, Abey and Penny, and he offers to comfort and care for them when their mother is taken into custody.
Vincent is also shocked to learn what his sister has done. For the sake of the kids, he and Brock bury the hatchet-and soon find they have much more in common than they realized. With Abey and Penny’s help, they grow closer, until the four of them start to feel like a family. But Vincent’s sister and her boyfriend-an equal-opportunity jerk-could tear down everything they’re trying to build.
REVIEW:
Fire and Hail is everything you expect to find in an Andrew Grey book. It has a good solid storyline that engages with you as you listen (or read), characters you can relate to and love and a sense of growth between the MC’s. Fire and Hail tells the story of Brock Ferguson, a rooky police officer and Vincent Geraldini an accountant who ends up caring for his sister’s children. The story is about building a family. It really left me with a warm feeling.
What didn’t I like: I felt like this book lacked strong female characters. The mother of the children in the trunk is obviously a mess, but the only other long term female presence in the book is Brock’s mother and I personally found her annoying. And perhaps this is just a pet peeve of mine, but I did miss having a range of women in this book.
At times in Fire and Hail I felt like the offer from Brock to use force or scare someone by using his position as a police officer was wrong. And it didn’t feel like it was being used to push the story forward or that it was part of his personality – to me, it didn’t feel natural and it jarred me out of the story.
Things that I liked: The relationship between the Brock and Vincent grows in a very natural way given their background. They have both grown up and they move to get to know each other again. I was also really impressed with how the children where crucial to the story, but they didn’t take over. The two children are involved and also in the forefront (as children of that age are), but there was plenty of adult time in the story. There are several secondary characters from previous books in the series. They are all likeable, happy and integral to the story. However, I haven’t read the previous books (Fire and Hail can certainly be read as a stand alone), and I didn’t have any problems with not recognising characters or what was happening. I knew the secondary characters were from previous book but that didn’t impact on my reading experience.
Randy Fuller does the narration and I think he does a great job. It is well paced and his inflections are nice to listen too. I enjoyed the whole audio experience.
Overall this is a good, easy listen (read). It is light on angst and it has a sweet happy ending.
RATING: 
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