Lights and Sirens, Lisa Henry
Jun. 12th, 2019 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraLights and Sirens, Lisa Henry. #2 in the Emergency Services series (fairly loosely connected; Gio from the first book shows up briefly at a CPR recertification course). Paramedic Hayden likes driving fast, saving lives, and having guilt-free hook-ups; the only person he doesn’t get on with, after a misunderstanding over a speeding ticket, is police officer Matt Deakin, a by-the-book type who moved to Townsville to look after his elderly grandad. When the misunderstanding is sorted out they have sex, but it seems to be developing into something more…
The main obstacle here is Hayden’s emotional damage, past and present - he’s a former foster kid with abandonment issues, and then he breaks down after a terrible week at work (fatal car accident, young boy drowns in backyard pool, suicide of someone he knows) - and in some ways it feels as though the relationship is almost too easy, given all that. Matt gets less development, although the relationship with his grandad is great. I didn’t find this as engaging as the first one - there’s a lack of heat between the leads, and the tragedies they’re dealing with overwhelm the storyline to a degree. But I like the characters and the detail (both the Australianness and the emergency services stuff) and I’d like to read another in the series.
The main obstacle here is Hayden’s emotional damage, past and present - he’s a former foster kid with abandonment issues, and then he breaks down after a terrible week at work (fatal car accident, young boy drowns in backyard pool, suicide of someone he knows) - and in some ways it feels as though the relationship is almost too easy, given all that. Matt gets less development, although the relationship with his grandad is great. I didn’t find this as engaging as the first one - there’s a lack of heat between the leads, and the tragedies they’re dealing with overwhelm the storyline to a degree. But I like the characters and the detail (both the Australianness and the emergency services stuff) and I’d like to read another in the series.
