The Fireman and the Cop is the first book in the ‘Ellery Mountain’ series, which is set in a small town in Tennessee. This stars Max Harrison, a volunteer firefighter, and Finn Ryan, a cop, and is told in third person from both Max and Finn’s povs.

2.5 Stars



I’ll start my review with the cover. It doesn’t match Max or Finn. It only matches their hair color. Finn is the dark-haired cover model supposedly, but the model looks like he’s in his mid to late thirties. Finn, if I remember correctly, is twenty-five. I don’t even remember how Max is described in the book except the model doesn’t sync with the story. Covers are important, they are the presentation, and if they don’t match, then it does affect the story for me. These two don’t match.

The blurb gives some of the info of the plot. A little more is that there’s a fire bug in town and each of the set fires are worse than the last. Not only that, somehow Finn seems to be involved in each of them.

This story was rushed. Even though the blurb says there’s been 5,000 words added, the scenes feel like they were typed out as fast as the author thought of them without thoroughly fleshing out the scenes to make them smoother or go into them deeper. Because of that, I never was drawn deep into the plot or the characters. It just felt like the story was jumping from scene to scene, explaining what was happening then moving on to the next one.

There were a lot of inconsistencies. Things like Finn telling his friends at the Friday meeting about meeting a guy, which was Max, and basically outing him. He didn’t even know if Max was out. I was really surprised at that. More than a couple times Max said he wasn’t going to tell people he was gay, but he’d kiss Finn in public, hold his hand and then buy condoms. In a small town like Ellery, people aren’t going to notice and spread the gossip? There were just many dumb things the author didn’t fix, which makes me think they rushed to get this story out without really checking it over. The ending was also rushed, with Max basically cornering Finn in his house and Finn saying he was glad Max didn’t give up on him, even though Finn was having bad flashbacks of his past and the person after him. It was a bad conclusion to the story.

I didn’t care that much for Finn or Max because of the way the plot was rushed and the less then thorough delve into each of their characters. Finn was the hometown boy who never wanted to leave Ellery. Max left the city because of the homophobes at his last employment. Both fall in lust with each other as soon as they meet. Granted that Finn is woozy from smoke inhalation and is about ready to pass out as he’s loaded into the ambulance. There’s no subtlety with them getting to know each other. Max let’s Finn know immediately he wants to get with Finn. Max also falls in love with Finn in a matter of weeks. I had trouble telling their voices apart in the story and had to often re-read scenes. After I finished the book, I realized their voices were pretty much the same. I also kept getting the impression that Finn was in his mid-thirties, he didn’t sound like he was in his twenties, he sounded old.

Overall The Fireman and the Cop was not a well written story. The plot and ending were rushed. The author didn’t go into enough character depth, or develop the romance well. I give this book, 2 Stars because Goodreads doesn’t allow half stars.

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Hot, sexy (and unfortunately short) read. I'll admit it's a fairly cliche story line, but R.J. Scott manages to deliver it without it feeling like that. Due to the short length of the book I felt it was a bit rushed and I would have loved to have had more background and relationship building between Max and Finn, but then I am a bit of a size-whore in that regard.

Overall I really did enjoy being able to simply lose myself in this book and that's one of the reasons I read these in the first place. I'm looking forward to reading more of the books in this series. ( )

So...the last book I read before [b:The Fireman and the Cop|16060479|The Fireman and the Cop (Ellery Mountain, #1)|R.J. Scott|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1362170919s/16060479.jpg|21847797] was crappy. Boo.



Put me in a crap mood. Double boo.



So I had to call a television intervention and retry reading at a later time to get back into the swing of things.

TV? No problem because Fall US primetime TV score.

Reading? I started and stalled. I rather let the book speak to me, connect with the characters, wait for the hook that I love.

So five books in (I will get back to those books, I swear), of starting and stalling...the sixth one hooked me in. Yay.

Is it a masterpiece? No. LOL

The story has minor issues but I liked the ideas. I liked the characters. I like the potential for the series. It was packed with some angst, former abuse, sexy firemen, ex-soldiers and a cop who got hurt...a lot. Sexy, some suspense and easy to read.



Did I enjoy? Yep.

Out of my book funk? Yep.

Following more from the series? Yep!

What's my rating? 3.75 stars



Hooray for the power of books! (I'm probably preaching to the choir, huh?) ( )

3.5 stars ( )

3.5 stars ( )