REVIEW: Flare Up by Shannon Stacey

Dear Shannon Stacey,

Flare Up is book six of your Boston Fire series, which is kind of two loosely linked trilogies, featuring firefighters from Ladder 37 and Engine 59 of the Boston Fire Department. Books 4 (Hot Response) and 5 (Under Control) made reference to Grant Cutter’s burgeoning relationship with Wren Everett. It was clear that Wren was hiding something from her past and it wasn’t just that I had read the blurb for this book that I understood that it involved a scary ex. At the end of book 5 however, Wren had ghosted on Grant, breaking his heart. He was devastated and angry and hurt and did not understand why she’d left mere days after telling him she loved him. He had been saving for an engagement ring and then she just disappeared. He tried to find her but was unsuccessful and when Flare Up begins, it has been five months and he’s still not over it.

When Grant’s crew are called to a fire in a crappy tenement, he is shocked to discover Wren overcome by smoke on the floor of a shitty apartment. All the feelings come crashing back – the desire and care and the anger and hurt.

Wren didn’t just ghost on Grant when she left. She also bailed on her friendship with Cait Tasker and various other Boston Fire staff and WAGS. She’s been alone for five months and after the fire, she’s lost just about everything, again.

Having Wren back in their lives, the group do a quick consult to check in with Grant but ultimately decide they’re not going to leave Wren alone to handled everything. And Wren for her part, also not over Grant and seeing the hurt she’s caused to him by leaving, finally tells him all the things she’d been holding back and, most importantly, why she left.

There was an abusive ex but he’s not abusive in the way I thought he was going to be.

Even though I’m a huge fan of a rescue book (I know, it’s not very feminist but I just can’t help what hits me in the id) because I am a feminist I do appreciate it when the woman has agency and isn’t a doormat. So I appreciated this exchange between Grant and Wren fairly early on.

“You don’t have to take care of me, Grant.” She said it firmly, looking him in the eye. “I have some money put aside. I have what I need to start over again and I have some friends. I don’t need to be saved or rescued. Yeah, I’m scared of Ben, but I can handle that, too. I’m not a damsel in distress.”

“I’m sure as hell not a knight in shining armor,” he responded. “But I’d like for us to be friends.”

“I’d like that.”

“Although, I feel like I should point out I did, in fact, literally rescue you last night.”

It takes time for Grant to put the past fully aside. He doesn’t understand, even after Wren’s explanation, why she didn’t tell him. To his immense credit however, he has a mature reaction to his feelings.

It was still there, churning in his gut. Why the fuck didn’t you just tell me? He wanted to fling the words at her—to yell them from the rooftops—but he swallowed hard and kept them inside. He was never going to understand because he’d never felt the kind of fear and vulnerability she had, so the words would do nothing but inflict more pain and guilt.

As it happens, events later in the book bring home to him in a new way the kinds of things Wren had been feeling and I think he probably did understand eventually.

Once Wren decides to open up, she commits to it. It takes a while for Grant to trust that Wren won’t just leave again if things get tough and navigating a relationship where you’re trying to take things slowly when there’s so much history is a challenge for both of them. But it was very satisfying to me to watch them work out their issues and forge a new path together.

Of course, the abusive ex is a part of the plot, but again, not quite in the way I had expected. It may not have been as dramatic and perhaps the denouement was a little anticlimactic but there was much for me to appreciate.

For fans of the rest of the series, there is a bit (but not too much) of a catch up with previous couples, including some pregnancies. The banter between the various groups of friends is always good but I laughed out loud at the conversation the guys had about late night cravings and food aversions.

“I had it the worst,” Derek said, and they all groaned. “No, seriously. When she was pregnant with Isaac, even the faintest smell of bacon made her very sick.”

A hush fell over the room, and Scott laid down his spoon. “That’s a thing? That can really happen?”

“We had no bacon in our lives for months.”

“You went out and found yourself some side bacon, right?” Aidan asked. “I mean, a guy’s got needs.”

Flare Up didn’t have a dramatic rescue and it wasn’t as angsty as I had been expecting but I enjoyed it just the same. The chemistry between Grant and Wren was great and I loved the way they communicated with each other once Wren had committed to opening up. I had no doubts about the HEA because they were so sensible about the important things and careful with each other’s emotions. Good judgement can be super sexy is all I’m saying. There was plenty of sexy aside from that though – oh boy this couple know how to scorch up the sheets. Grant and Wren were in no way boring.

Note though that there’s a very long excerpt from another book in the back so the story itself finished about 30 pages before I was expecting it to.

Grade: B

Regards,
Kaetrin