All Fired Up by Jenn Burke

Narrated by Tim Paige

Set in 2024, 5 years after the events of Graveyard Shift, the third book in Jenn Burke’s Not Dead Yet, All Fired Up is book 1 in Ashes & Dust, the spin-off trilogy featuring fan favourite Evan Fournier.

Warning: spoilers for the earlier series follow so look away now if you don’t want to know.

Evan was changed into a vampire by Hudson in the first book of the series and fell in love with Iskander, another recurring character. Iskander died in Graveyard Shift and Evan is still learning how to cope with the loss.

When Hudson and Wes travel to London to visit Hudson’s sick (human) brother, Evan is tasked with keeping Caballero Investigations going but Hudson warns him to stay away from any of the “special cases” – ie, the paranormal ones. Well of course, that doesn’t happen.

Dr. Anika Kozlow is a doctor to paranormal beings and has been treating Evan for depression over the course of the last 6 years. He’s doing much better, on medication and having had cognitive therapy as well. When Dr. Kozlow seeks out Evan because one of her patients died after apparently having her magic sucked out of her, Evan goes undercover at the Rising Sun Retreat – the common link, they find, with at least 20 deaths. As a person with a mental illness, he doesn’t have to do much pretending while he does some digging.

At the retreat, he meets the mysterious and monotone, Red, an Asian man who lives on the grounds but has no apparent role in the business.

It’s not a spoiler because the blurb reveals this; Red ends up trying to kill Evan because reasons and, in a battle of their relative magics, it breaks a bond Red had with bad guy 1 and transfers it (albeit a little wonky) to Evan.

Red, it turns out, is Colin Zhang, a firefighter who apparently died in 1990 in a fire but whose body was never found. He has no memory of the past 34 years and it takes a while for him to take in where he is, when he is, the existence of paranormal beings, that he is apparently one, etc. (Just what sort of one I’m not going to reveal here.)

In the course of Evan’s investigation he uncovered a mysterious plot to cause some kind of mind control to various members of the paranormal community, for reasons unknown. Bad guy 1 wants Colin back because Colin’s magic is essential to his plan. Because of the wonky bond, Evan and Colin need to be physically close to one another and so they continue the investigation together.

Along the way, Colin is embedded into the Caballero found family and begins to come to grips with his own bisexuality. In 1990, acceptance of bisexuality and homosexuality wasn’t where it is now, and the story does some interesting historical examination of how far we’ve come (we have a ways of go of course but things are better than back then for the LGBTQ+ community). Evan feels his connection with Colin is more than just magic and, with everything else going on, they turn to one another for mutual comfort.

The story ends on a hopeful HFN note but they’re a long way from living HEA – though I’m sure they’ll be there by end the end of book 2 and solidly together by the end of the trilogy. I was grateful there was no romantic cliffhanger here – I am allergic!

Only part of their mind control investigation is complete however and it will likely take all 3 books to sort it all out completely.

There were a few things which felt a little underdeveloped. I’m sure there will be more about them in the next book, but I really wanted to know what Anika’s status was before I finished this one.

Tim Paige narrates. I have little experience with him but I enjoyed his performance very much. Perhaps the distinction between his Colin voice and his Evan voice was a little too subtle from time to time (leading me to occasionally become confused about who was speaking) but otherwise, I was a happy camper with this listen. Mr. Paige had believable female character voices and good differentiation for the wider cast and I enjoyed the emotion and pacing. I listened to another audiobook recently where the pacing was all over the place so it can’t be overstated how important it is for this listener to have consistency and good flow to a narrative performance.

I don’t know if Mr. Paige is Canadian but he does a good Canadian accent and I liked his other accents too. I also liked the emotional depth he brought to the story, which cycled between grief, fear, passion and humour and made it easier to connect with the characters. They were already relatable but as we all know, a good narrator just adds something. One of the great things about this book and the previous series is the found family aspect and hearing those connections and Colin being drawn into them was a definite plus.

Hat tip to the author for a clever spin on the “only one bed” trope and making it believable, as well as good bi rep and mental health rep. I still miss Iskander (#notoverityet) but Colin is a worthy mate to Evan and I’m happy to see he’s getting some joy again.

Between the strong narration by Tim Paige and a great story, I’m happy to recommend All Fired Up.

Kaetrin

---

Buy All Fired Up by Jenn Burke on Amazon