Overview –
Chasing Fire
Product Details
- Pub. Date: April 2011
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Hardcover , 472pp
- Sales Rank: 63
- ISBN-13: 9780399157448
- ISBN: 0399157441
Synopsis
Little else in life is as dangerous as fire jumping. Flying past towering pillars of smoke, parachuting down to the edge of an all-consuming blaze, shoveling and sawing for hours upon hours, days at a time, all to hold the line and push back against the raw power of Mother Nature.
But there’s also little else as thrilling — at least to Rowan Tripp. The Missoula smoke jumpers are one of the most exclusive firefighting squads in the nation, and the job is in Rowan’s blood: her father is a legend in the field. She’s been fighting fires since her eighteenth birthday. At this point, returning to the wilds of Montana for the season feels like coming home — even with reminders of the partner she lost last season still lingering in the air.
Fortunately, this year’s rookie crop is among the strongest ever — and Gulliver Curry’s one of the best. He’s also a walking contradiction, a hotshot firefighter with a big vocabulary and a winter job at a kids’ arcade. He came to Missoula to follow in the footsteps of Lucas “Iron Man” Tripp, yet he’s instantly more fascinated by his hero’s daughter. Rowan, as a rule, doesn’t hook up with other smoke jumpers, but Gull is convinced he can change her mind. And damn if he doesn’t make a good case to be an exception to the rule.
Everything is thrown off balance, though, when a dark presence lashes out against Rowan, looking to blame someone for last year’s tragedy. Rowan knows she can’t complicate things with Gull — any distractions in the air or on the ground could be lethal. But if she doesn’t find someone she can lean on when the heat gets intense, her life may go down in flames.
My thoughts
It is a pretty tough thing to write about an romance author as big as Nora Roberts, who has constantly products books that do extremely well! I have been a Nora Roberts fan for years and I am pretty sure I have read every book she has written. For her last few series, I felt like I had the book figured out before I got to the end just because her style can be so similar. Now while this can be frustrating, it is also kind of nice to be able to know that when you pick up a book it is going to be constant and great quality. That being said, Chasing Fire surprised me because I didn’t have it figured out as a matter of fact I didn’t have any clue how the book was going to end.
I enjoyed the romance end of this book a lot! There wasn’t just one romance but two. I love this different dynamic to the book. It was very unlike the The Bride Quartet because this was Rowan, a fire jumper and girl who firmly believes that she should never get involved with another fire jumper and her father, Lucas, the very famous Iron Man Tripp, known for his fire jumping, and locally for raising his daughter alone after her mother up and left. Needless, to say that Rowan meets Gull, a rookie fire jumper from California, who is not going to let her rule about not dating another fire jumper get in his way. Lucas, now retired from fire jumping, owns his own skydiving company and meets the love of his life, Ella, after her son buys her a tandem jump as a gift. It was interesting to watch these two stories unroll and the challenges that both father and daughter face as they do.
As for the fire jumping, WOW! I learned so much about wild fires and how they are combated. This was my very favorite part of this book. I love to learn something new from a book and Nora Roberts did a wonderful job and introducing me to a very new topic but did it in a way that was very easy to understand. Fire is some very scary stuff and this book really explain how dangerous forest fires really are. I high recommend this book for this part of the story along, but the added murder mystery and love stories make it a very well rounded story.
My Rating
I rate this book 4.5 stars. Simply because I felt the book ended before it should have. I know at over 450 pages it had to end just I just wanted more.
Source: This book was a gift from another blogger.
