Feeling Fiery

Love is Awkward

Life gets awkward when two opposites find love is their unexpected adventure.

Fiadh O’Cleary is ready to celebrate all summer after becoming a tenured associate professor of fermentation and brewing. Within hours of turning in her grades and going home for the break, she finds a letter in her city apartment informing her she’s now single because she’s boring. Worse, she discovers her carefully laid out plans of teaching students the art of making hard cider in a proper space that is not a makeshift lab, her dream of all dreams, is close to gone. An evening of commiseration with her best friend leaves her with a throbbing head and a litany of emails for day-trip adventures.

Fiadh calls the adventure company to cancel and is informed by the grumpy man on the phone, Maverick Graves, that the programs are nonrefundable. Despite trying charm and then flat-out protest, she cannot change his mind. Her choices are kissing the money goodbye, or a summer of experiences she is not prepared for.

Maverick thinks nature has all the answers Fiadh needs. On an adventure day, rain pours, and she finds herself in a defunct old cider mill. With repairs and proper care, the space would be better than anything the city could ever offer. But the mill comes with Maverick. As her timeline grows shorter, she finds arguing with Maverick is more fun than not being around him. His quiet nature is intoxicating and intellectually addicting.

The upcoming school year means she must figure out whether there’s a way to be all in with Maverick and the mill, or if she’ll have to hit pause and retreat back to her comfortable routine of university life. Plans are hard to make when there are distractions everywhere, and Maverick Graves is a distraction.

©2024 Beck Erixson (P)2024 Beck Erixson

My new favorite slow-burn rom-com; sweet and spicy like cider!

I was enchanted and entertained by this rom-com featuring a female college professor and a male outdoor adventure guide/business owner in rural NJ. This book is unique because the heroine Fiadh (sounds like Fia) is a food sciences professor in NYC who specializes in fermenting hard cider. Her job at a college made me nostalgic about my own days as a grad student because the author really captured the academic lifestyle. The guy Maverick puts on a grumpy front, but he is sexy, thoughtful, vulnerable, and has the heart of a poet. Fiadh seems to manage her anxiety and fear of failure by over-planning everything in her life. Fiadh and Maverick’s slow burn romance, the humor, the loveable side characters, and the fascinating fermentation of cider kept me spellbound and highly entertained. I really hope that Beth Erixson makes more rom-com audiobooks.

The narrator Victoria Connolly did a very good job overall, but sometimes she made the heroine and her best friend sound alike. Also, I couldn't tell from her narration when the heroine was thinking something versus saying it out loud. Otherwise, the narrator had lovely voices for the characters, really good comic timing, and excellent emoting and pacing. Her voice for Fiadh was beautifully musical, and she made Maverick sound wonderfully sexy.