Review – Some Like It Hot

When western Alaska erupts in a devastating fire, the elite firefighting crew of the Jude County Smokejumpers is called in to save the day. They’ll do anything to stop the fire, including fighting alongside a crew of local prisoners. The last thing they expect is a jailbreak and when the prisoners disappear into the forest with one of their own, they’ll have to fight not only the fire, but for the freedom of their friends…during the Summer of the Burning Sky. Book 3: Some Like It Hot Riley McCord is trouble, from his blue eyes to his renegade smile—a cover for the grief of losing his father three years ago in Afghanistan, a loss that is still top secret. Riley masks it all by living large—working hard and playing hard, and that includes romancing Larke Kingston, local wilderness medic. When he’s sidelined while working the forest fire, he’s determined to rejoin his team, but to do so, he'll have to accompany Larke into the wilderness when she is dispatched to a medical emergency. What he doesn’t realize is that trouble is waiting for him in the woods… Medic Larke Kingston lost the man she loved during her service in Afghanistan and she’s not interested in a troublemaker, so Riley’s no threat to her heart. Just a short-term distraction. Until, that is, a wilderness medical mission puts her face-to-face with an escaped prisoner. Suddenly she needs Riley more than she wants to admit. Riley is shocked when the escapee claims to have answers about his father’s death. However, before he can uncover them, the fire turns and is bearing down on Larke’s ranch, and his team. Now, only Riley and Larke stand between the flames and destruction of everything they both love. But will the price of saving the ranch—and the team—be greater than they both can bear? In book 3, the epic Summer of the Burning Sky series comes to a blazing, shocking finale. Now available: Light My Fire (Summer of the Burning Sky Book 1) Now available: The Heat is On (Summer of the Burning Sky Book 2) My thoughts: Some Like It Hot is the third book of this series and fans will want to read them in order as they sort of don't stand alone.  In fact, some might want to read the Montana Fire series first because that is where the firefighters came from to fight the Alaskan fires. I was looking forward to reading Some Like It Hot and as soon as it appeared on my kindle I dug in and read it in a few hours (estimated reading time is a bit over three hours.) Larke and Riley are more gritty than I'm used to, both looking for a one-night-stand as the story opens, which rather shocked me, but Larke has a godly father and the values she was raised with kicked in. I loved that she -- they -- remembered her father's words and faith  messages and I hoped they'd find God for themselves. I also loved the poem by Kipling--the motto of the Navy Seals which Riley memorized and quoted parts of often.  I will have to look that poem up to read it sometime. This is the final novella of the series, but there are two secondary characters I'd like to see more of -- Orion and Thorne -- both have a huge dilemma of their own that wasn't resolved and this book ended with kind of a cliffhanger about Thorne...