ALL SUMMER LONG brings together Charlie Dixon, a muscular, tough, firewoman, with underwear model and movie butt double Clay Stryker. Talk about opposites.

Charlie is tough—physically and mentally—because she thinks she has to be. When her biological clock alarm begins ringing, she realizes that she has some issues from her past that must be dealt with before she can raise a mentally healthy child (i.e. not pass on her own fears and phobias to her child.)

Clay is a pretty face…or at least that’s what everybody sees but he wants more. He’s retired from his butt double work (that’s a young man’s game, says the 30 y/o hero!). He hold a college degree and has some ideas of what he’d like to do next. One is moving to Fool’s Gold to be near his family (mother and two brothers, heroes of books 7 (Summer Days) and 8 (Summer Nights).) The next is starting a vacation business based in Fool’s Gold, if he can get the town council (all women) to stop looking at his butt and take him serious. And third, he wants to join the volunteer fire department.

Clay has the assets necessary to help Charlie get past her traumatic history. Charlie has the connections, not to mention does the training for, the volunteer firemen recruits. Tit for tat, so to speak. A simple trade of favors that of course finds each of them falling for the other.

I have to also mention Charlie’s mother, Dominique Guerin. Maybe one of the most selfish, self-centered, egotistical characters I’ve read in a while. I figure some readers will complain that Mallery went over the top with Dominique but no. I’ve know women like Dominique. Mallery does a brilliant job getting into the character’s head, into her thoughts… really understanding how women like Dominique think. Kudos. That fact that Dominique’s daughter, Charlie, is nothing like her galls Dominique. Where Dominique is petite, Charlie is tall and muscular. Where Dominique is very feminine in appearance, Charlie prefers pants, boots and chopped hair. There has been a mother-daughter split for all of Charlie’s life, something else that has to be dealt with before Charlie can really take solid hold of her mothering reins.

A very good book.