Too Hot to Handle (Jackson Hole, #2)

by Victoria Dahl

The new curator of a museum in Wyoming, Merry Kade hires contractor Shane Harcourt to restore the beat-up ghost town to its former glory, but when his real motives for taking the job come to light after they spend the night together, Merry must make a difficult decision.

• ISBN10: 129939180X
• ISBN13: 9781299391802
• Publish Date: 1 January 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 29 April 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Harlequin
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[Linda]

This review was originally posted on (un)Conventional Bookviews
I briefly got to meet Merry in Close Enough to Touch, and I was instantly curious about her. A strong woman, but one who has been put down more often than not, Merry has changed jobs many times, but she is set on making it in Jackson. Both because her best friend Grace lives there now, and because she's gotten the dream-job in restoring a ghost town just outside of Jackson. Too Hot to Handle shows a lot of the changes Merry goes through, and some of those changes are in part thanks to her neighbor, Shane.

[Cocktails and Books]

Great title, great plot, but the book didn't deliver. Victoria Dahl seemed to have all the right elements for an excellent book but the book title promised much more than the book contents contained.

The heroine, Merry, was portrayed as a woman that has thus far failed to do anything meaningful with her life. She has bounced around from job to job and lived with various relatives and now with a friend in a new location with a new job. Merry has no romantic attachments and most men relegate her to the friend category. She is determined to prove her worth with the new job. I was surprised that the heroine wasn't the usual strong, super efficient career woman. I looked forward to seeing the plot progress, but the author jumped into so many other issues that Merry's issues got lost in the shuffle. The reader is bombarded with issues of abandonment in Merry's childhood, her mother's decision to forbid her to move back in, a job that is not what it seems, and family members that resent her intrusion into their lives.

The main male character, Shane, has an equally rushed and chaotic descriptive pattern. Shane is the strong, hunky next door neighbor. His dad abandoned the family at age 10, his brother ran away, his mom lives in a distorted reality, and he's involved in a lawsuit to settle his grandfather's estate. It was difficult to form an attachment to Shane because the author brings up several of the issues throughout the book. You can't begin to really get insight into his character without these multiple issues intruding.

Eventually Merry and Shane make love after an earlier failed attempt. That was a bright spot but even then the author makes a point of letting the reader know that the event lasted less than an hour. That was confusing because earlier the author described Shane as being so overcome and exhausted as a result of his orgasm that he went to sleep. How long could he have slept if Merry arrives back home in less than an hour? How great was the connection if Merry jumps right up and runs home after supposedly being so satisfied? I was confused and frankly disappointed that the author took the time to point out that Merry hadn't had sex for over 2 years and Shane infrequently had sex only to find out that it was a short wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. As a result I felt disconnected from the storyline again.

Merry learns that Shane is the grandson that is holding up progress on her job, confronts her cousin at a party, and is told that her mother is in a lesbian relationship with her former teacher. Poor Merry should she be concerned about her cousin's behavior, betrayal by Shane, her job, or her mother's lesbian relationship? She receives a message that Shane signs away his rights to 2 million dollars because of her and finds his dead father's remains after 20 years on the property of the proposed museum. She seeks Shane out, finds him at the sight of his father's demise, and they make peace. In the epilogue they finally say they love each other. The end?????

There were simply too many different storylines happening in this book. There were multiple events that i didn't add. Had I tried to write all the different branches from this story this review would have been endless. The additional information detracts from the main story and no resolution is really given to any of them. Characters were in the story but their entrance was apparently for no reason because their relevance was tangential and didn't add to the story at all.

I wish I could say I enjoyed the book, but I didn't. I found the characters irritating, and I think it's because I simply had no idea who these people were. I am grateful for the end and had the author not hastily put an epilogue to announce they were in love one would never have guessed.

Reviewed by Michelle for Cocktails and Books

[Leah]

Last year I read and love Close Enough To Touch which was my first ever Victoria Dahl novel. I was blown away by the characters and the writing, by the tension between Grace and Cole, and I fell in love with Jackson, Wyoming and its cowboys. I was truly blown away by the novel and I adored it. I was absolutely ecstatic to see Victoria’s second Jackson-set novel, Too Hot To Handle, on Netgalley and as soon as I was accepted for it, I started reading it because I was just SO excited. It was just as fabulous as Close Enough To Touch and it makes me ridiculously, insanely sad to know I have to wait until November for the third novel, although there is an anthology and a short story in the meantime!

Too Hot To Handle introduces us to Grace’s best friend, Merry. She’s bounced around a lot of jobs, but thinks she’s finally found her perfect job restoring Providence, a ghost-town just outside of Jackson. But there’s a snag in the shape of a lawsuit going on between the Bishop family, who are trying to build the ghost-town and between the grandson of Mr Bishop. Grace’s neighbour Shane Harcourt, isn’t a man for whom relationships work. Ever. When Merry asks him to help her renovate the ghost town, Shane reluctantly agrees, seeing an opportunity to help put this stupid ghost town idea to bed, as it’s not something he wants and it’s certainly not something someone like Merry should be concerning herself about. However when the two start working together, sparks start to fly, and despite both of them trying to not go there, it soon proves impossible…

I loved Too Hot To Handle. It had the same frenetic pace as Close Enough To Touch, and I adored Merry almost as much as I loved Grace. It was great to be back with familiar characters in Grace, Cole, Rayleen, Jenny, and it was nice to get to know both Merry and Shane, who were both minor characters in the previous book. I wasn’t entirely taken with the ghost town of Providence at first, but the more I read about Merry’s enthusiasm (and Shane’s lack thereof) the more it sprang to life in my own mind. Her passion, her excitement for life was just so enthusastic, it was just so infectious. Shane, too, got under my skin. I wasn’t a fan of his devious ways, but I was quite easily able to put that to one side because he just sounded so sexy. The tension between the two was pitch perfect and I didn’t think I’d ever read about two people more perfect for each other.

Dahl has once again hit it out of the park. In my eyes, she can do no wrong, especially when it comes to cowboys, even if Shane insists he isn’t really a cowboy. The writing was perfect, it was all just so perfect. It was so perfect that I started reading it at 7 p.m. and didn’t stop until I had finished it just past midnight. I mean, that’s insane, but I literally could not stop reading, at all, ever. I couldn’t stop until I had got to the end and I went to sleep with the biggest smile on my face because the ending was just so awesome. I can’t wait for the next book in the series, along with the two short stories. This is a place I’d quite like to visit, because all of the characters are just so great. You can see a story in every female character there! I adored Too Hot To Handle. Adored it. Read it. You won’t regret it at all, because it was awesome and Victoria is awesome and totally wins at writing.