1) Burn Zone ★★★★
2) High Heat ★★★★

content warnings: mentions of homophobic family members, discussions of past death of a partner and family members
representation: Mexican-American gay protagonist, demisexual protagonist, m/m main relationship, pansexual side characters, m/m side relationships

“‘There’s always been something so right about holding you. Always,’ Luis whispered.
‘Yeah.’ He had to swallow hard. ‘I wish—’
‘No wishes.’ Leaning down, Luis silenced him with a soft kiss across his mouth. ‘No regrets.’”

I've been loving Annabeth Albert's Hotshots series as I've been reading it this year and this is by far my favourite, which is kind of strange because trope-wise it's easily the least up my alley. I'm normally not into second chance romance but Annabeth Albert might just convert me because I loved how it was done here.

When they were teenagers, Tucker and Luis were madly in love and convinced they would stay together forever even with Luis moving away. Now at thirty-five, not having seen each other since Luis left, the two meet again and, against their better judgement, start falling for each other all over again.

This is different from a lot of Albert's other books, most notably in the ages of the characters and what this means for their relationship. She's had older main characters but they're always paired with a twenty-something, which is it's own incredible dynamic, but there was something refreshing about having two guys in their mid-thirties fall in love. Tucker has two teenage boys and an ex-wife, and that complicates their relationship in ways that never felt trite or cliche. I also loved that Tucker and Heidi, his ex, are still friends and just kind of fell away over time. I'm pretty sick of only ever seeing miserable exes in fiction, even if as a child of divorce I can say that it's not at all unrealistic, so having Heidi and her husband Isaac have such a positive relationship with Tucker was nice to see.

Tucker isn't the only a-spec main character Annabeth Albert has had, and hopefully won't be the last. Finding character on the asexual spectrum, especially in smuttier books, is so difficult so I really appreciate that Albert has now done it on more than one occasion (in addition to having side characters on the asexual spectrum).

It is with a heavy heart that I say there was not a major dog character in this book as there were in the past two... But there was a cat! And she was a real cutie-patootie who I would like to cuddle. All romances should be required to have a cute animal as a major character. Honestly, I don't know why they all don't already do it.

This series is so great. I'm very happy to see that I was mistaken when I claimed this was a trilogy because there seems to be a fourth book coming next April. I'm so not ready to give up this series yet and I hope it has many more entries — or Annabeth Albert goes on to write another fantastic series similar to this and Out of Uniform. If you've liked any of Albert's previous books then you'll almost definitely love this one. It has everything great from all of her other books (well-written sex scenes, loveable characters, a central relationship that's easy to root for) plus a cat! What more could you want!

I received an ARC of this book for free as part of a blog tour in exchange for an honest review.