Hello everyone!
I've been feeling a bit moody and completely unhappy with some of my reading choices, which is why my reading list SAYS I'm reading Queen of Shadows, but I'm actually waiting for my reading muse to kick in for that one.
Sadly, sometimes I get into a fantasy slump, but usually I can fix that pretty easily.
Usually, I say.
I haven't done it so far, even though I've gone back to re-read The Hobbit, and then deviated completely to Arthur Conan Doyle while I was at it, and then just ditched the whole mystery/fantasy genre altogether and went into the real world again.
There are three authors perfectly guaranteed to make me quite happy with the books they write, as I may have mentioned before: Noelle Adams, Serenity Woods, and Kathryn Shay, not necessarily in that order.
I started off with Woods and then moved along to Adams, but then just gave in to temptation and picked up Shay's 'Cop of the Year' (my first book by her) and then to the one I'm reviewing today, After the Fire.
After the Fire is the first in a series of books about firefighters from Hidden Cove, a town just outside New York, and it really is a neat introduction to the lot of them that'll be running around the pages. It's also incredibly accurate, because the author spent a long time actually riding along on fire trucks and interviewing firefighters, which means that we're not just getting the FEELING that she knows what she's doing - she actually knows her stuff.
That, to me, is always a good sign that the book will be very readable.
In this one, we follow the story of five siblings, two more than most however, who are all connected to firefighting because their father was a firefighter, and three of the kids are, as well: Mitch, Zach and Jenny all work in the same firehouse together, while their sister Connie seems to be a stay-at-home mom, married to a doctor, and Paulie, their brother, is a lawyer.
The distinction, if you can see it, is actually intentional, as the three Malvaso firefighters and the two Malvaso 'outsiders' have sort of been at odds for most of their lives. Throw in a best friend Grady O'Connor, a paramedic, and you can see how sides might form.
Now, the book begins with an incredibly large and dangerous fire, later dubbed simply the Sinco fire, where all three Malvasos are injured, and promise each other to do better with their lives if they survive.
They do, but doing better isn't a walk in the park.
For Zach, this means he needs to make amends with his ex-wife, whom he cheated on repeatedly and who he has two sons with, but Angie doesn't want anything more to do with him and is, in fact, dating and later engaged to another man towards the end of the book, but we do get to see Zack mature enough to let her go and come to terms with his own loss.
For Jenny, it's all about having a baby - but she makes it complicated because she wants the baby daddy to be Grady, her best friend since forever (and literally, anyone can see they're crazy about each other but these two).
Grady has his own demons to fight, however: his former fiancée is an alcoholic whom he broke things off with and now blames him for her due in life, and later on his wife committed suicide while seven months pregnant with their first child. So, you can see how the idea of having another baby is scary to him, but it's Jenn, so he tries to pull it together. They kind of go up and down with all of this, she goes out with another man, Grady gets jealous, they have sex (after deciding to do it artificially) and Jenn does, in fact, end up pregnant.
Which is the kick in the ass Grady needs to get an appointment with the in-house therapist, and after a miscarriage scare, they tell her family and start preparing for a Valentine's Day wedding.
Now we come to Mitch, who is the eldest Malvaso child and who turned down a full scholarship to university after the patriarch died to help his mother care and raise the other four kids. He's also the main protagonist of the story, to begin with.
Caught in a now-loveless marriage with a socialite, Mitch is making steps to ensure he's home more for his wife and two children, Trish and Bobby, but it's made difficult because Cynthia is pretty much a shrew who isn't happy with anything he does, and throws temper tantrums that a five-year-old would shake his head at.
Coupled with the fact that a new detective is in town, who clicks with Mitch immediately, and you've got yourself a whole set of problems.
Meg comes from a police family, her father and husband were both killed on the job, and her husband had also had a cheating stint with her, so she's wary of being 'the other woman' when the attraction between her and Mitch grows.
But both of them know nothing's possible while he's married, and both do nothing, despite the circumstances that keep throwing them together as they start on a summer camp for children of firefighters and police officers who have died in the line of duty. Mitch's children react positively to her, as well, and she's far more supportive of Bobby's musical aspirations and Trish's questions and need for some basic motherly contact than Cynthia, who's just cold.
However, Cynthia goes on a warpath when Mitch says he's going to divorce her, after another tantrum during which she trashes their son's bedroom and things, and accudes him of adultery and being an unfit parent (I know, she can talk, right?).
As another big fire explodes over the city on the nine month Sinco anniversary, and all three Malvaso firefighters are in it once again, however, the other two come out of the woodworks.
Paulie and Connie have both been roped into helping with the camp with either lawyer duties or charity money raising, but now it's time to come clean: Paulie has news for Mitch.
Cynthia and he had an affair, and she got pregnant, which was what ruined Paulie's marriage since he thought he and Cynthia would get together, but what she did was go and have an abortion. Connie knew Cynthia had had an affair with one of their brothers, but thought it was Zach, not Paulie, so there you go for convoluted Italian families.
Paulie goes to Cynthia, who is sueing for full custody of the children (despite literally being a terrible mother) and promises her a trip to Hell in a hand basket if she doesn't drop it and sign the papers quietly. Meg delivers the papers, and herself, to Mitch after his two-week self-imposed exile on the waterfront, and the two of them are finally free to be together and start planning a future for themselves.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Gosh, I LOVE this book for how real it is, for how complex the relationships are, and how detailed the characters are within the story, even the ones that just come in from time to time. If you ever get the chance to read a Shay book, I'd suggest you start with this one, or Cop of the Year.
I'm now on to the second firefighter book from her, and loving it!
xx
*image not mine
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