Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Hot Axe
SERIES: Axford Brothers #2
AUTHOR: May Archer
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 362 pages
RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2026
BLURB:
Falling in love with my straight best friend? Tragically inevitable.
Telling him? Completely out of the question.
Everyone in Winsome knows Robbie and I are a matched set. A package deal. Ames and Robbie, Robbie and Ames.
He’s the calm to my chaos. The sun shining through my rain cloud. The guy who convinced me to be a firefighter. The man who’s known every single thing about me since we were thirteen…
Except for the teeny, tiny, inconsequential fact that I’ve been in love with him for years.
I planned to take this secret to the grave. Robbie’s straight. He’s engaged. And I’m finally–finally–ready to move on.
But one uncontrollable blaze, one daring rescue, one inconvenient injury, and one heavily-medicated, wildly inappropriate love confession later, my plan’s up in flames.
Suddenly helpful, perfect, shirtless Robbie is bathing me, dressing me, and nursing me back to health. And if being around my gorgeous bestie 24/7 wasn’t torture enough, it seems I’m not the only one having un-platonic thoughts.
But there’s no way I’m letting myself fall into the fantasy again. Because if I let myself believe this is real and it isn’t, it won’t just break my heart… it’ll break us.
And I refuse to risk our friendship, no matter how tempting the man’s hot axe might be.
REVIEW:
This is a good second book in this series. It has a lot of May Archer’s signature small town, big family, banter, gossiping nosiness, low angst romance between two deserving guys.
Ames Axford, full time chef/restauranteur and part time firefighter, has pined for his best friend for YEARS. Robbie Wojcik, Winsome Fire Chief and best friend of Ames, the youngest Axford, seems to be the only person in town who is unaware of Ames’s real feelings. Now that Robbie is engaged to Lissa and that means that their friendship will change.
Lissa has things planned out for them. Robbie goes along with things. He’s a people pleaser and just kind of floats along. The therapist who is now seeing all the first responders listens to him and gives him a few things to think about. He’s dealing with a dysfunctional older brother as well who cannot keep a job or get his life together. Also, he’s been having very different and intrusive thoughts about his best friend now that he’s never had before. It is the result of his recently and reluctantly agreed upon celibacy? Of something else entirely?
When Ames is injured and he needs help while he recovers, well of course it’s Robbie to the rescue. This is a bit awkward though given that Ames needs a lot of support 😉 And Robbie is now sort of forced to deal with these new feelings and try to figure himself out. What he has to figure out is why now? What does his future actually look like? What does he really want?
In the meantime, Ames has been trying forever to keep his true feelings from Robbie. He’s tried to change them by fake dating and really dating other guys. But they just aren’t Robbie and it’s just not working. When he has to spend so much time with Robbie, how is he going to be able to not respond?
I loved these two. They had both been living with feelings they couldn’t explain or act on. And the cliche about the gay guy falling in love with his best straight friend wasn’t helping either. I loved the therapist here (great rep), the Axford family support, and of course the cast of eccentric small town friends, neighbors and found family. There is plenty of sweetness and spice here also. There are a few loose threads, particularly around Lissa that I kind of expected more exposition on, but she wasn’t really a villain here. Clearly she and Robbie weren’t really suited and had very different outlooks on what constituted a good life and marriage. If anything, they were both a bit naive and didn’t communicate very well at all about expectations. They read a bit immature to me, but I was born old, so I’m likely not the best judge here 😉 The hurt/comfort here was the true vehicle to get these two to figure out their relationship and I loved that trope along with the best friends to lovers. May Archer is an autobuy for me and can always be counted on for a heartwarming HEA. Recommended.
RATING: 
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