Too Hot to Handle (Jackson Hole, #2)

by Victoria Dahl

[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