Stevie‘s review of Reaper’s Fire (Reaper’s Motorcycle Club, Book 6) by Joanna Wylde
Contemporary Romance published by Berkley 09 Aug 16
Although I have a great theoretical love for motorcycle romances, the Reapers series is one of the few to have both grabbed and kept my attention. Overall, I’ve preferred the books with more mature heroines to those with younger couples, and so this particular story appealed to me from the start. We’ve met Tinker and Gage already and seen some of their interactions alongside Painter and Melanie’s story. Now the two take centre stage, giving us the chance to see Tinker as a woman trying to come to terms with her past and build a life for herself back in the town where she grew up. Not that she’s desperately keen to stay there, but family commitments and a failed marriage have forced her into a corner with few other escape possibilities.
The younger Tinker thought marriage to a hot-shot lawyer in Seattle would be a huge step up from working at her parents’ motel; however, her husband turned out to be more concerned about his image and opportunities for career success than he was about Tinker’s welfare, even leaving her to miscarry their baby alone because he’s prosecuting a high-profile case. That episode in their marriage proves too much for Tinker, and she returns home, where her father is struggling to run the motel alone after Tinker’s mother’s death. Eighteen months later, Tinker has a small band of loyal friends, a large group of the town’s gossips waiting for her to provide them with more scandal after an unfortunate incident soon after her arrival set tongues wagging, and a long list of repair jobs that need to be carried out if she’s ever to make the motel a success or even sell it as a going concern. Back on the positive side, she’s managed to transplant her online chocolate-making business from Seattle into a small tea shop in the town, and someone is about to answer the ad she placed for a handyman.
Gage is in town to investigate the activities of the local Motorcycle Club, affiliates to his own club, the Reapers. They’ve known for some time that all is not as it should be – the club has a new president and he seems to be running things entirely to suit his needs rather than those of the club’s members and allies. Needing a reason to hang around the town and also a place he can stay without attracting too much notice, Gage answers Tinker’s ad, posing as a recently-divorced trucker wanting to put down vague roots close to his kids, but not too close to his ex and their old life. Still smarting from the loss of her own child, Tinker takes pity on Gage and gives him the job and the accommodation that comes with it – the fact that Gage accomplishes the first job without complaint, not to mention the obvious attraction between the two, helping sway her decision considerably.
Unfortunately any chance at a relationship between Tinker and Gage is prevented for much of the book by the fact that Gage is undercover and so forced to live out the lie that he wants to join the town’s MC as a Prospect, and that he returns the affections of the woman who offers him the best chance of finding out what’s going on – the sister of the club’s president. Tinker is confused by the two very different sides she sees to the man carrying out her repairs – the one that is diligent in his work and understanding over her father’s seeming loss of memory bears no resemblance to any man who’d associate with the town’s bad boys and girls. On a side note, I’m becoming a little wary of books in which the heroine has to deal with parents suffering from degenerative mental conditions, but this one carried the plot line very well and brought an alternative slant to the issue.
Another potential issue this book had to deal with is the way current events have overtaken the series timeline – always a problem with contemporary stories that try so hard to be up to the minute that they’re setting jumps ahead of our own. This book manages to incorporate natural disasters not foreseen during the timeline of the previous book, without overly compromising the overall story. I was less happy with the epilogue, set a couple of decades in the future, but some readers will want the reassurance that everyone will continue to be happy, I suppose.
All in all, a worthy addition to the series, in my opinion, although I know some readers will be less happy about the length of time the pair take to overcome the obstacles thrown in their way by virtue of Gage’s undercover work.
Grade: B
Summary:
The club comes first.
I’ve lived by those words my whole life—assumed I’d die by them, too, and I never had a problem with that. My Reaper brothers took my back and I took theirs and it was enough. Then I met her. Tinker Garrett. She’s beautiful, she’s loyal, and she works so damned hard it scares me sometimes . . . She deserves a good man—one better than me. I can’t take her yet because the club still needs me. There’s another woman, another job, another fight just ahead.
Now she’ll learn I’ve been lying to her all along. None of it’s real. Not my name, not my job, not even the clothes I wear. She thinks I’m nice. She pretends we’re just friends, that I’ve still got a soul . . . Mine’s been dead for years. Now I’m on fire for this woman, and a man can only burn for so long before he destroys everything around him.
I’m coming for you, Tinker.
Soon.
Read an excerpt.
Other books in this series:
