A very cute, simple firefighter romance, Hot Under the Collar is funny, has spice and takes a deep dive into its characters’ complicated relationships with their families. A perfectly solid little romance with some very cute cat shenanigans to boot.

Firefighter Leo March and barkeeper Lynne O’Donnell have known each other forever, but one Halloween night – during Leo’s 21st birthday – everything changes between them. The end result is Lynne pushing him away and concentrating on running O’Donnell’s.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature has other plans for these two. Leo’s cat, Fred, has impregnated a stray, and she has kittens in the bar’s storage room. Leo and Lynne bond as they try to take care of the cats. The kittens become social media stars and then they have to deal with public scrutiny together – and that only serves to bring them closer. But can they outrun the past?

You can tell Hazel Mayes based Fred’s personality, his offspring Twig and the other cats on real animals and that’s one of the best draws of Hot Under the Collar. I liked the complicated relationship between Leo and Lynne, but I ended up sympathizing with Leo more than our heroine, and that was a problem.

Lynne is a good, hardworking person bound by family duty, which means she has one hard shell to break through. This can make her exasperating and there were several moments where she drove me crazy. 

This is a sprawling, interconnected story and I definitely could tell that sequel bait was afoot in Lynne’s redemption-seeking brother, Charlie. The stories are so interconnected that it could be off-putting for folks who pick this up on its own. But if you like cats and hot firefighters, then Hot Under the Collar is definitely worthwhile.

Lisa Fernandes has been reviewing romance novels ever since her great aunt left a Billie Douglas book out in the bathroom. She’s currently working on a biography about Julian Sands.