Spark & Blaze

A Guns & Hoses Novel

By: Brenda Cothern

Narrated by: Maxwell Palmer

Brett Malone has been working for Tampa Fire Department for over three years and the last thing he needs or wants is a rookie who can't follow orders on a scene. He doesn't need to be attracted to the rookie either, especially since his closet door at work is firmly welded shut.

All Evan Carmichael ever wanted to be was a fireman. He graduated top of his class at the Fire Academy, but nothing he learned there prepared him for the harsh reality of the job. Back to back shifts of one trauma call after another send him quickly to his breaking point.

Thankfully, support from his co-workers and the attention from the one fireman he thought hated him, helps him survive his first few brutal shifts. However, it's attention of another sort that he may not survive at all.

This book contains M/M sexual situations and is intended for listeners of legal age in the country in which they reside.

©2016 Wench Publishing, Inc. (P)2017 Wench Publishing, Inc.

Hot and yummy!

Review by Mel
Genre: LGBTQIA, M/M, Romance

3.5 to 4 Blue Roses

4.5 Blue Flames

Narrator Maxwell Palmer blandly delivered a blazing hot firemen romance. His performance left room for improvement around his character differentiables.

It was difficult to listen to the dialogues between the men, but as soon as I got engulfed into the content of the book itself, the hot as fuck drama, I forgot to judge the lack of emotional input and drifted off listening to erotic scenes unfolding. The scene in the club with Evan dancing brought back so many memories. Me, myself and the I used to be the first on the dancefloor and the last ones to leave. Sexy dance moments aside, I also enjoyed some very funny moments as well. I did enjoy the audiobook so much I will listen to the rest of the series.

I do recommend this audiobook if you like hot fireman, who love other hot firemen.

Happy Listening

Passes the time, friendly secondary characters

Style note: Point of view shifts with each speaker. I’m used to POV being fixed within scenes & changing at scene breaks. Once I figured out the headhopping, things made more sense. This style was consistent throughout.

Evan is a rookie knowitall who doesn’t listen to expert advice. Brett is a closeted gay man who isn’t friendly. Evan stubbornly remains a knowitall who thinks he has to be macho to appear manly while, refreshingly, has no hangups about suddenly going gay for a grumpy coworker. So while there’s a bunch of unnecessary toxic masculinity that springs up around “being able to handle himself”, none from Evan’s side is about being gay, mostly because he likes dancing at clubs.

Brett is closeted for no reason disclosed to the reader. He has out gay coworkers who become friends (he gets friendlier). He gets panic attacks thinking about coming out, but not when he runs into burning buildings apparently. He’s super in touch when dealing with on the job feelings and, well, totally closeted about personal feelings. Except for his cat. He has a good relationship with his cat. The cat, so far as I know, never gets harmed. I admit, I barely listened to the last 30 min because it failed to hold my attention so I might have missed a late snuggle with the cat but Brett is gone from home & injured and the cat just vanishes from the story. If the reason for the panic attacks is given, I missed it.

There are some nice secondary characters who keep an eye on each other emotionally, which saves the book. There’s some ableist nonsense midway (feeling invulnerable) which is annoying.

Minor spoiler: There’s another storycrafting issue aside from forgetting the cat and Evan failing to grow emotionally. It’s why I rated ithe story 2 stars instead on 3. The problem is the stalker is not a character we meet before the reveal. Any good mystery writer knows that there has to be some setup early enough that the reader has met the whole cast before the reveal & this doesn’t happen. It was nice that no one we like from the story is evil, but it’s unsatisfying. Again, I kind of skimmed the last half hour of the story. I tried to rewind to catch this but my attention kept drifting.

Steam: Med-Hot, explicit m/m sex on page. Odd mix of well done and not quite right. Would have excused some of the oddness because it was kind of hot until the guys tried to get it on right after a bullet wound. 🙄

Narration: The narration was good enough to make me hang in on an otherwise flawed story. There were fire sound effects between scenes. It wasn’t a bad idea but sounded a bit more ominous than most of the story felt before the stalker plot got going.

Steamy first-time/gay-for-you theme

I enjoyed this audiobook overall, although the narration could use a little work. The narrator starts out sounding very stiff and detached, making me think I wouldn't be able to get into the story. He does better when he is voicing the characters, than when he is just describing what is going on. By the second chapter, he started to sound more natural. After that, I got into the story and didn't pay much attention to the delivery.

One thing I really liked was the realistic portrayal of the firehouse and the reactions that result after a hard shift or a bad outcome. It's not all dreams and rainbows, and the guys have to learn how to cope. The characters in this book are funny, snarky, and sexy. I especially loved the club dancing scenes. They really sounded hot and I could envision the scene. There are a lot of things going on in this story, including fears of coming out, confusing feelings of attraction, mysterious messages, drama, danger, and eventually arson. All in all, an entertaining listen.

I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook at my request from the author, narrator, or publisher and am voluntarily leaving this honest review

Awesome M/M

I really liked this story! I’m a huge fan girl for “gay for you” romance and this is a good one. Plus, hot firefighters! The narration was great and super hot! I’ll be looking for more from this author and narrator.

Wait....who is that again?

Ok I love me some MM and some firemen, so let me get that out of the way. My issue with this book is in the writing it how it translates to audiobook. The author has a whole cast of characters, which is fine and usually easy to keep straight in most books but in this one, people go by first names, nick names and last names all at the same time. so for every character there could be 3 or more names in play which just makes following the story confusing especially during an audiobook. I wanted to break out a memo pad and take some notes while driving because I was like "Wait! Is he talking to the rookie who is also the hero or is that someone else?"
I finished the book even more confused than ever.
Also there's a cute flame effect they play in between chapters but the chapters or breaks weren't very long and after awhile I was OVER the sound effect.

Too many closet references

I almost gave up on this book because the reference to “the closet” was repeated on so often.

Overall enjoyed the performance

Overall I enjoyed this audiobook. The one thing that decreased my enjoyment of the book was the repetitive nature of Brett's statements about the inside of his closet. I enjoyed the relationship between Brett and Evan and am definitely interested in reading more in this series.

Spark & Blaze

There may have only been a few main characters in this book but they are referred to by both their first and last names on the author’s whim making it hard to follow the story. One of the men of the main couple is in the closet only at work and continuously having panic attacks that a coworker may or may not be referring to him being gay which is not a problem at the firehouse that he works at only a problem for the character. There are others at the firehouse that he works at and on his same shift that are openly gay. Brett is also constantly talking about his hookups from the well-known gay bar as his tricks which only makes me think he is taking money in exchange and not just looking for a hookup. There are a few odds and ends that are either forgotten or not carried through. We have a chapter that makes a really big deal about Brett’s relationship with his cat and then it is promptly forgotten about for the rest of the book even when he is away for a prolonged period of time. There is not a lot of character development and Evan comes off as very naïve and never seems to grow emotionally. I liked the idea of this book but it missed the mark for me. The narration by Maxwell Palmer seemed lacking in emotion and was very flat. I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

I won't say it's bad, but it's not good.

I enjoyed the first two books in the series, but this one is really lacking (editing, continuity). One issue is in the flashback of Brett & T 's hookup they were both adamantly Tops but they found other ways to fool around, and now a year later it's reiterated over and over that Brett's preference has always been to bottom? Also, Brett & Evan are newly in love, yet Evan - the "straight" guy - is starting to lust after Tig (his friend's bf)? Maybe it's a setup for a future book in which the two couples become a foursome. (Hard pass for me, thanks) And the stalker bit (the only reason I didn't DNF) was anticlimactic. Meh.

characters hard to follow and became confusing,

characters hard to follow, became confused, lost, description of men's feelings way too much