Title: House on Fire
Series: Ashes & Dust: Book Two
Author: Jenn Burke
Publisher: Carina Press
Length: 256 Pages
Category: Urban Fantasy
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: House on Fire is an impressively busy book with plenty of twists and turns of both the emotional and investigative variety, and I can’t wait for the answers to all my burning questions.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: He’s done fighting his attraction to the sexy vampire…
To say former firefighter Colin Zhang is struggling to accept his new life would be a vast understatement. He’s bound to a vampire he didn’t choose, living in a house filled with creatures better left to the imagination—there’s a lot to resent. As much as he tries, he doesn’t resent Evan—far from it. But he needs to know that what he feels is real and that requires breaking their bond. No matter the cost.
Vampire private investigator Evan Fournier is more than willing to explore his connection with Colin, but the crisis at hand keeps getting in the way. Their bond makes it dangerous for them to be apart, so he’s forced to put the other man at risk while he investigates the latest in a series of murders. If he doesn’t find the killer soon, the paranormal community will seek retribution on all humans, not just the guilty ones.
As the tensions escalate, Evan and Colin find solace in each other and their growing attraction. But if their bond is broken, attraction—even love—might not be enough to keep them safe.
Review: “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be,” is going to get quite the workout judging by the end of Jenn Burke’s House on Fire. What will come of the decision Colin has made to take control of his life remains to be seen, and the ways in which Evan is determined to ensure he’s a factor in the outcome rather than letting fate take its course is almost guaranteed to make the next book in this series a full-on romantic odyssey.
Evan and Colin’s relationship issues and Evan’s continuing battles with both depression and insecurity are only a portion of this installment’s conflict. Colin’s life was already upended when he discovered he’d been pronounced dead thirty-four years ago, was involuntarily bonded with Evan upon the death of Colin’s captor, and the things Colin missed out on in those three-plus decades come as an incredible blow to him when revealed. On top of that, someone is out to expose a secret, and folks are dying as a result of it. This leaves Evan racing against a conspiracy thirsty media and the instant gratification of the internet to get to the bottom of things, and Colin is being dragged along helplessly in the mystery’s wake thanks to the nature of their soul bond.
Jenn Burke doles out all the action and suspense so neatly in House on Fire while ensuring Evan and Colin’s conflict remains at the fore so we never forget this is their romantic journey playing out against the challenges they face while simply trying to go about the living of a private life in a voyeuristic world where cell phones and the internet exist codependently. Burke also ultra-effectively baits the proverbial hook for book three in the series in a cliffhanger sort of way that’s left me anticipating where Colin goes from here, if where he goes will include Evan, not to mention the lingering implications of a murder that hits close to home. In fact, I was anticipating such a different outcome in this particular storyline that I was put decisively in my place by how wrong I was, so big kudos to the author for that heart-wrenching twist.
House on Fire is an impressively busy book with plenty of twists and turns of both the emotional and investigative variety, and I can’t wait for the answers to all my burning questions.
You can buy House on Fire here:
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