Book review: High Heat by Annabeth Albert

Book: High Heat (Hotshots #2)

Author: Annabeth Albert

Publication: July 27, 2020

Rating: 3 stars

High Heat is the second book in Albert’s Hotshots series with one of the MCs being a side character in the first one. We follow Garrick (who sustained a spinal injury in the first book and ended up having to use a wheelchair/crutches) and Rain (in town for the time being to help his grandma) as they navigate their relationship that starts as a sort of friends-with-benefits type of thing that’s only supposed to be temporary. Of course feelings start to get involved and they both have their own struggles with accepting what the future may look like for them and how their dreams may have changed over the course of them knowing each other.

Spoilers ahead

I loved how this wasn’t a drawn out slow burn romance like most books that I tend to read are. Both characters express mutual interest quite early on and also come out to each other within the first couple of chapters. I also loved how the whole book is very sex-positive. The MCs definitely have their kinks, but there’s no shaming or embarrassment. They tell each other what they like and what feels good and there’s no need to try to be a mind reader.

Until the 62% mark I was really impressed with how rational these characters were and I especially liked how there was no unnecessary drama here. I occasionally enjoy my drama-for-drama’s-sake, but this time I just wasn’t in the mood for it. The MCs actually communicated with each other and talked about their feelings in a no-nonsense way..although Garrick may have needed some coaxing from Rain from time to time. However, about twenty pages after this point I kinda wanted to backpedal a bit and tell the MCs to just keep communicating for f’s sake.

After reading the whole book, though, I feel like communication isn’t the biggest problem they have, but the fact that they hadn’t really had any time for self-reflection and figuring out how their wants and needs have changed over time. Garrick was sruggling with the fact that his recovery from the accident wasn’t going as planned whereas Rain was not sure about his career path and how a relationship might figure into his longing for an adventure. These two problems combined made some pretty impressive drama-fireworks.

My biggest issue came about ten pages later when Garrick was being a martyr by deciding that he knew best what Rain wanted from life and kept pushing him away on the pretext of ”you’re young, when we met you said you wanted an adventure, I’ll sacrifice our relationship by letting you go, but I definitely won’t tell you that I love you even though I most definitely do because I don’t want to influence your decision and make you resent me if you decide to stay”. Annoyed, who me?

That kind of behavior is kind of a trigger for me. When other people decide they know best what you truly want, it definitely gets my blood boiling both in real life and in books. Anyway, Rain is only 23 so yes, while it is reasonable to assume that he wants adventure (I mean I’m 33 and I still want it) he’s also clearly still growing up and is allowed to change his mind about what he wants. Anyone is. And it’s not for anyone else to approve or disapprove of your choices even when you’ve indicated in the past that you may have had some other plans for your future. Besides if we stopped growing and changing as we grew older this world would be filled with adults who behaved like toddlers (not naming any names).

Phew, rant over now.

Anyway, I loved Rain’s comment ”Maybe not all of us are on the same timeline” in response to Garrick referencing to his young age once again. And that’s so true. In addition to people wanting different things in life, they may also want them at different times and Garrick doesn’t seem to get it until later on.

Another thing I loved was the way Albert wrote about Garrick’s injuries and the ensuing physical therapy and struggles regarding his sex life and return to ”normal”. Rain was super supportive through all of this and so was Garrick’s father (maybe not so much regarding G’s sex life). I have no first hand knowledge of how it feels to be differently abled, but for an own voices review I would suggest reading Cadiva’s review on Goodreads.

All in all I enjoyed the book. The language was good and it was easy to read. The characters were well rounded and they developed nicely as we got further into the story. The plot was okay, nothing too remarkable and this was definitely a character driven story. If you’re looking for the same kind of action that the first book had, then you’ll be sorely disappointed.