Arctic Heat: A Gay Romance

Another great book in this series! I'm really sorry to see the Frozen Hearts series come to an end. I did a bucket list trip to Alaska in May of 2018 with family and friends. Annabeth Albert had just announced that she would be writing a series set in Alaska but I knew it would be quite a while before the first book would be published. I don't know if the fact that she was writing this series made my trip even more exciting or not but I'm sure it didn't hurt. I'm no photographer but I was inspired so much on that trip that I took more pictures with my iPhone than I have of any other trip I've ever been on. As I've read each book in this series it's brought back wonderful memories of the beautiful things I saw in Alaska. We were very fortunate to have fantastic weather with very few clouds and only a little rain. There were a lot of young people working in the various venues and I was reminded of this while reading Quill and Owen's story. Quill is captivated by Owen and his zest for life but he's afraid to take a chance on a relationship. He's not out to his co-workers and has good reasons for not wanting to come out or be involved in any drama. Owen has survived cancer and facing that devil changed his outlook on life. He's got a bucket list and spending the winter in Alaska is on it. No amount of discouraging from a hot park ranger will keep from fulfilling his commitment as a volunteer. Arctic Heat touched my heart in many ways. I'm a cancer survivor like Owen, and having faced that it changed my outlook on a lot of things, just like it did for Owen. Owen's cancer was also the same kind that my nephew had when he was in his early 20's. Reading about what Owen went through was a little hard even though he – and my nephew – survived. Arctic Heat has just the right amount of angst – enough to keep things interesting but not so much that I was cringing a lot while I read it. While this is a bit of a slow burn story at first, there's also a nice amount of heat going on once Quill gives in and decides to enjoy Owen for as long as he's there. Arctic Heat is a book that held my attention from start to finish. I should have known better than to start reading it in the evening. I couldn't put it down and stayed up until 5:00 a.m. reading it; thank goodness I'm retired! Annabeth Albert is one of my favorite authors of M/M romance and I can't wait to read whatever she has coming up next. A review copy was provided by the publisher via NetGalley but this did not influence my opinion or rating of the book. ***Reviewed for Xtreme-Delusions dot com***