Erryn reviews Thin Ice (Pine Cove Book 6) by H.J. Welch (Published by the author on May 7, 2021, 276 pages). The audiobook was released on July 28, 2021, was narrated by Nick J. Russo and is 8hr and 47mins.
Kamran’s ex broke his heart, tricked him into aiding a bank robbery, and now he wants him to do one last job. There’s only one way to say no: Seek the protective custody of the biggest, grumpiest FBI agent ever. And pretend to be his boyfriend for a weeklong family reunion in their giant mansion. Wait, what?
Agent Lee Marshall is notoriously all work and no play. Letting a flirty, hot-as-sin playboy like Kamran get under his skin is not an option. He has to protect him, not hook up with him. But pretending they’re an item for a week? That couldn’t hurt….
Kamran swore he’d never love again, but Lee will do anything to keep him out of harm’s way. Maybe there’s a teddy bear heart under the hunky FBI agent’s gruff exterior, and Kamran is the only one who can tease it out. What started out fake becomes all too real, but when Kamran’s past catches up to him, Lee must risk everything to save him.
Book six of Pine Cove. Thin Ice is a steamy stand-alone MM romance novel with a guaranteed HEA and absolutely no cliff-hanger.
Buy Links: Audible | Amazon | Add it to Goodreads
My Review:
I’ve enjoyed this series tremendously and this was another great instalment. I’ve watched Kamran from afar, always wondering when he’d get his HEA. Well, it finally happened. He’s been a great supporting character and a fixture in Pine Cove. As an Uber driver, he’s managed to be in the middle of some great scenes. When we find him at the local gay bar, he’s having a good time. Until his ex shows up and it’s quickly apparent all is not well. There’s a reason why they’re exes. His jerk tricked Kamran into aiding a robbery and he wants Kamran to do one final job.
Fool me once. Kamran’s not falling for it, but when an FBI agent shows up, he’s not going that route either. He figures he can brazen it out until the bad guys come after him and he turns to the agent. The hot sexy agent. Now, it stretched credulity that an upstanding FBI agent would bring a witness to his family home and they’d pretend to be boyfriends, but this is fiction, so I suspended my disbelief.
Kamran is a sweetheart and it’s had not to love a guy who’s had so many knocks in life. Lee, the FBI agent, has been focused on work and a promised promotion for as long as he can remember. Even this visit home is a distraction he could do without. But as the family welcomes him home, and welcomes Kamran into the fold, Lee sees things differently.
Of course Kamran’s ex isn’t finished and there’s a final confrontation. But the good guys win in the end and the men get their happy ending. I loved how attentive Lee was to Kamran’s needs and I loved how Kamran softened Lee’s sharp edges. They just worked together.
I have to mention Nick Russo’s narration. He’s done a good job with this series and I always enjoy his books. It looks like this is the last full novel in the series and if that’s so, I think it ended on a high note. I highly recommend it.
My Rating:
9.5/10 Pots of Gold (95% Recommended) – Compares to 4.75/5 Stars
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HJ Welch is a contemporary MM romance author living in London with her husband and two balls of fluff that occasionally pretend to be cats. She began writing at an early age, later honing her craft online in the world of fanfiction on sites like Wattpad. Fifteen years and over a million words later, she sought out original MM novels to read. She never thought she would be any good at romance, but once she turned her hand to it she discovered she in fact adored it. By the end of 2016 she had written her first book of her own, and in 2017 she fulfilled her lifelong dream of becoming a fulltime author.
She also writes contemporary British MM romance as Helen Juliet.
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