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All Consuming

All Consuming was the sweet, hot, low-tension romance that I really needed this week. Kal and Hannah were a couple in high school, but broke up when Kal left for college. They reconnect at their ten year school reunion, and find that not only is the spark still there, but that time and experience have made them better able to love each other in the ways they both need.

There isn’t a lot of conflict in this book. Hannah is recently divorced, and has moved back home with her seven-year-old son, Oliver. Her marriage was the kind where you only give birth to one child but still wind up as the mother of two…with the more troublesome and less mature one being the one you married. She is wary of entering a new relationship, and particularly mindful of any such relationship’s impact on Oliver. Her reluctance to commit to a relationship with Kal constitutes the main source of conflict in the story. However, this really is a very low tension story – while the relationship developed slowly, both Hannah and Kal are mature, sensible people, and I never had any doubt that they would work out.

And so most of the book was just this pleasant, gentle journey through their world. We see Kal dealing with tension in his new job with the Tactical Rescue Unit, and we see some of the rescues. Food is prepared and shared and eaten. We hang out with Kal’s family and with Hannah’s mother, and everyone is lovely and kind and supportive. We go to fairs and halloween parties and pool parties and weddings and we get a recipe for watermelon and mango salsa which I will certainly be making, and we watch as Kal bonds with Oliver.

And we watch Hannah and Kal fall in love, of course (and there’s plenty of hot sex along the way), but that was more or less a foregone conclusion from the start.

I feel like I am making this book sound a little dull, but honestly, it was an absolute balm to my soul. It’s been a rough few weeks in Australian politics if you are female and I feel like every time I go online I read some new, enraging, soul-destroying, appalling thing. And on top of that, I’ve been sick and feeling generally lousy for most of that time. So being able to retreat to a book where literally every character was kind and friendly and intent on being good to every other character was a profound relief.

All Consuming does not, perhaps, have the intensity that its name suggests. But it’s the kind of book you buy and keep around for a day when everything is terrible and you just can’t cope. It offers an escape into a kinder, gentler world, and sometimes, that’s the best kind of book in the world.

– Catherine Heloise

A sizzling new romance about a firefighter who reunites with an old flame and tries to rekindle the passion they once felt, by New York Times bestselling author Jaci Burton.

When firefighter Kal Donovan transfers to the Tactical Rescue Team, he’s determined to succeed by giving work one hundred percent of his attention. This proves more difficult at his ten-year high school reunion when he runs into Hannah Clark, his first love. She’s still the smart, funny, beautiful girl he loved in high school, but everything has changed. She’s divorced, has a son, and has zero interest in exploring an old romance.

Hannah has moved back home after a disastrous end to a marriage that never should have been. Now her only focus is getting her hair salon up and running, and making sure her son is happy. She doesn’t have time for love–especially not with Kal. She intends to look forward, not backward, and Kal is most definitely part of her past.

However as Hannah and Kal start spending time together, Hannah realizes that what she’s feeling for him isn’t nostalgia, but red-hot attraction. Kal’s intent on showing her what it’s like to be cared for, romanced, and consumed with passion–and Hannah loves it. But she wonders if she has the courage to risk her heart again, even as Kal vows not to lose her a second time.