Sarah Holland

Blue Fire by Z. A. Maxfield is an 82-page m/m contemporary mostly set in Colorado. It features the vivid, poetic writing for which the author is known. The story explores several themes: strength through tragedy, the impulse to rescue and be rescued, the conflicting tensions between the need for love and independence, and the healing powers of creativity.

Readers who adore the strong, silent type will love the portrayal of Adam, the innocent and virile firefighter. I’ll admit that I had to show more suspend disbelief over the way our heroes start their relationship, mainly because I found Adam’s motives hard to understand. However, their flawlessly written story grows stronger as it progresses.

The story opens in the viewpoint of Adam, a firefighter who fails to prevent a fire from consuming the spectacular house of a famous dead architect. The architect’s young lover Jared stands homeless, having managed only to rescue the architect’s portrait.

Adam takes Jared to a shelter, but can’t forget him. After Jared suffers a nervous breakdown, Adam visits him daily in an expensive hospital. Finally, he checks Jared out and whisks him away to a cabin in the snowy Colorado woods.

Though Adam’s motives are hard to identify beyond a love-at-first-sight impulse, Jared has spent his adult life controlled and coddled by his architect husband, and falls into the same pattern with Adam. To his credit, he realizes this and tries to find the courage to stand on his own feet. Meanwhile, he and Adam have hot healing sex. He also starts getting interested in creating stained glass art.

He leaves soon after, breaking Adam’s heart. The years pass and Jared grows into an independent, successful artist. However, he can’t forget Adam. When he learns that Adam has been badly injured while fighting a fire, he realizes he must go to him and ask for a second chance.

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An Adult love follows the same formula of any other romance novel. The hero, Scott Thornton, is rude, arrogant, moody and bossy. At the beginning of the novel the narrator continues to mention his brown hands which is frankly ridiculous. Scott Thornton is often paying attention to how sexually attractive Vicky is. Vicky is apparently unaware of this, but is convinced when she is almost raped by her cousin Charles that such happenings are her fault. Family relations are focused on and gender show more roles adhered to for example Scott says he will be Vicky's master. show less