Too Hot to Handle (Jackson Hole, #2)

by Victoria Dahl

[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.