Title:  Beautiful Burn
Author: Jamie McGuire
Publisher/Year:  CreateSpace Publishing 1/25/16
Length:  304 pages
Series:  The Maddox Brothers #4

Overview

Fresh out of college, Ellison Edson has fallen through the cracks of rock bottom. While staying in her family’s vacation home in Colorado, her behavior has finally gained the attention of her parents-but not in the way she hoped. Cut off from the millions she’s always taken for granted, and left alone to fend for herself, Ellie spirals further out of control, making a mistake she can’t take back.

Like his twin brother Taylor, Tyler Maddox is a member of the Alpine Hotshots, fighting wildland fires on the frontline. As arrogant as he is charming, Tyler’s nomadic lifestyle makes it easy to contain his relationships to one night. When he meets Ellie at a local party during off-season, her extreme personality and dismissive attitude fascinates him at first, but as his feelings deepen, Tyler realizes that the crippling inner demons of the woman he loves might be the strongest enemy any Maddox has ever faced.

My Thoughts

i’m a bit sad to see this part of the story ending, since i feel like there’s been some great stuff learning all about the Maddox brothers but so be it.  The difference in this book vs some of the others though is that we see aside from the beginning of the story, we’re jumping back into scenes from the other books, seeing how everything is actually intertwined.  So that being said, we get to finally connect some of the dots from the past stories and see how they all play out.

In this 4th installment, we get to see how Tyler gets his happily ever after, especially since it was teased a bit from when Travis and Abby actually had their wedding.  We saw that he had someone with him, and now we get more context to it all.

Tyler – one of the twins is also a hotshot- one of the elite fire fighting crew and it’s through that where we get to see more and more about who he is, how he’s different than Taylor (his identical twin) and how he feels about his own emotions and getting to be in love.

Then there’s Ellie, and i think that there’s the expected yet unexpected about her.  She’s an heiress of sorts, yet she’s also using that as an excuse to be a bit too much of a party girl who doesn’t care who she tramples in her path.  When her family stages an intervention and cuts her off, well it’s up to her to survive and fortunately, there are a few kind folks in the town that understand her and want to see her succeed.

So…throughout this story, we see a lot of the expected Maddox fighting come out – we know everyone’s background from Travis’ story.  we also see that he’s a protector and the best person from inside, thanks to his father, and that’s something that Ellie needs. It’s because of Tyler and Jojo – the girl she works for, that Ellie’s able to find her place and worth, but of course it comes with stress and pain.

Different than the other books though, we definitely see a more sexy side coming from our author – usually it’s very very PG and in this installment, things are getting racy.  There are moments when we get to see how there’s real chemistry between these 2 and that’s written in a way that we never really got in the past books.

I guess what we continue to get here is the same amazing story of family and love – and how it’s important to allow someone to help you out and support you.  Ellie needed it here more than anyone, and i think that it’s something that we see from the characters in the other books in the series too.  Tyler wants to have something of his own, someone to love and he’s kind of at odds with himself about it because it’s taking what he’s known and flipping it.

While we’re now done with all of the brothers, it looks like there’s a new series that picks up with Darby and Trex so that means that maybe we’re not really done with these guys.  I can only hope that we get more of them, and even if it’s in a spinoff of sorts – i’d be ok.  On that note – enjoy everyone and have a good weekend!