Where There's Smoke - Review of Tawna Fenske's Smokejumper series

by Susan Roberts

Tawna Fenske says this about her new series:  These longer, meatier novels center around a team of smokejumpers and air attack firefighters in the Pacific Northwest. Each book is a standalone novel that can be read in any order. Expect a few extra tears, but still plenty of humor.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. Free books were provided for an honest review.

The Best Kept Secret (Smokejumper #3)

March 2022; Entangled: Amara; 978-1649370303
audio, ebook, print (364 pages); romantic comedy

Tawna Fenske is a new author for me despite the fact that she's a very prolific romance author.  I decided to give one of her books a chance and I enjoyed it so much that I had to buy the first two books in this new series.  Not only do her pages give us some great romance but there's also a lot of humor in her stories.  It may be time to check out another one of her series.

Nyla is a nurse who loves to take care of other people - not just patients in the hospital but also her family and friends and even her sister's ex-husband.  After checking on Leo after his dental surgery, the drugs that they gave him made him very talkative and he blurted out a secret that floored Nyla.  She is known in her family as the person who can't keep a secret and it's a real struggle for her to keep quiet.  As she and Leo spend time talking about the big secret, there is a spark between them.  Can she fall in love with her sister's ex and will her sister and her family understand or be angry?

The romance between Nyla and Leo is great and their humor in rough situations is cute.  There was a lot of family drama in this book and that took away from the romance.  Plus, I had a problem believing that a sister would be happy about her sister falling in love with her ex-husband.  But the good far outweighed the bad in this book and it was a fun book to read.

Buy The Best Kept Secret at Amazon

Just a Little Bet (Smokejumper #2)

October 2020; Indie; 979-8550186022
audio, ebook, print (340 pages); romantic comedy

Tony and Kayla had a short-term romance but it didn't work out so they decided to be best friends.  Kayla is a photographer and Tony is a smokejumper who is away fighting fires for lots of days during fire season.  Kayla is looking for love and marriage and knows that Tony, who dates lots of women all for short periods of time is not the man for her. Both decide that they are bad at love and that Tony is a commitment-phobe..  When she takes a trip to photograph old forest burn sites, Tony goes with her.  They decide that they should meet some of Tony's old girlfriends to see how they remember him - was he a bad boyfriend or did he just not want to get in a committed relationship.  The more time that the best friends spend together, the more that the spark between them grows.  By the end of the story, we know if both of them are bad at love or if there is a committed relationship in their future.

I really liked Kayla in this story - she had a great career and worked hard to be a success.  Tony wasn't my favorite character at the beginning but once I learned about his childhood, he became much more likable and I could picture the two of them together.

This is a cute romance with lots of passion and some lighter moments to balance it out.

Buy Just a Little Bet at Amazon

The Two-Date Rule (Smokejumper #1)

February 2020; Entangled: Amara; 978-1640637436
audio, ebook, print (320 pages); romantic comedy

Willa has had a rough upbringing and devotes herself to the company she owns.  She occasionally finds time to go out with her two best friends but most of her time is spent in front of her computer.  To accomplish her goals in life, she feels that being in a committed relationship would take too much time away from her job so she's made a personal rule that she'll only go out with someone twice before she ends the relationship.

When she meets Grady, she has a fantastic first date with him.  When she explains her two-date rule, he finds ways to spend time with her that she won't consider a date -- playing putt-putt, hiking and other activities that they decide do not count as dating.  The more time they spend together, the closer they get to breaking her rule.  When she loses two clients, she decides that Grady is too distracting and tells him that the relationship is over.

What will win - Willa's commitment to her job or getting into a committed relationship with Grady?

Buy The Two-Date Rule at Amazon

Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina with her husband of over 50 years.  She grew up in Michigan but now calls North Carolina home. She enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with her family. She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and historical fiction. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook.

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