lucyreads_'s Reviews > Fired Up

Fucking Ashton Carmichael. He was going to wreck me, ruin me. I knew it as well as I knew my own name. I probably had always known it.

I really enjoyed this book, it was a super solid romance for me. In this one we meet Ash and Beau who have grown up in the same small town, Fever Falls, and have always been frenemies until one night after graduation Ash kisses Beau causing him to realise some things about himself. Then Ash leaves town to begin his professional sports career whilst Beau sticks around to be close to his mum and brother, but he continues to keep up with Ash's career the whole time.

Years later Ash's career is being ruined by his off the field antics, his playing's gone downhill and his team's tired of dealing with his reputation which leads him to take an early retirement. With his newfound time and freedom he returns to his old home in Fever Falls, where not long after getting back he runs into Beau, or Cranky Campbell, whose out for lunch with a friend and they begin to reconnect.

Beau has always hated Ashton, or Cocky Carmichael as he likes to call him, because Ash is cocky, he's a show-off and he does everything he can to get under Beau's skin. He doesn't hate him because he's got a crush, no, definitely not.. Beau's living a good life, he never regrets his decision to stay home instead of going into professional sports. He works as a fireman and spends his spare time coaching a football team for people with special needs like his brother Kenny. He sometimes does judge Ash though for his decisions to fuck around instead of taking his job seriously, but then when Ash comes back to town and they spend more time together he starts to realise that maybe there's more going on there than he thought.

I could not get enough of the relationship between these two, their chemistry was fantastic! I loved their transition from frenemies to lovers, there's definitely a lot of snark and banter between them but it quickly starts building up into something more. Ash is deeply closeted so he definitely has a lot of inner conflict about how to deal with his growing feelings. I loved seeing him come to terms with his sexuality and trying to work out how to come out to the world, I thought it was handled well and Beau was brilliant throughout. He was super supportive and he didn't always allow Ash to just lean on his usual defence mechanisms, e.g humour and alcohol.

There was one part of this that I found a little bit odd, (view spoiler)[why did Ash as a deeply closeted famous man not yet ready to come out go to a gay club and make out with his boyfriend where anyone could see? I know they said people wouldn't care in their town and tried to describe it away but I just didn't buy that part. (hide spoiler)]

Overall though I absolutely adored this one. It was a super fun, cute romance that I found myself really enjoying. We were introduced to some other characters in this one who i'd be interested to see get their own happy endings in the future books.