Review: Sunfire by Lynne Connolly

I was going to post this review over at TGBTU, but I think I’ll post it over here instead since the book in question has already been reviewed by someone over there and I do have the second book in the series for review once I get around to it.

Title: Sunfire: Pure Wildfire, Book 1
Author: Lynne Connolly
Genre: Erotic paranormal romance
Grade: B+
Reason for Reading: I was assigned Ms. Connolly’s forthcoming release, Icefire, for review, and I prefer to read series in order.

Synopsis:

Rock meets classical. Paranormal meets mortal. Will anybody get out alive? The members of rock band Pure Wildfire are firebird shape-shifters. Manager John Westfall will sacrifice anything for the power they wield, even his daughter Corinne.

Corinne attracts Aidan in a way he’s never known before. He’ll do anything to release her from Westfall’s trap. He offers her marriage, but Aidan wants more from Corinne — he wants her heart. And he’ll give her his in return.

Classical guitarist Corinne is desperate to escape her father’s control. She loves Aidan but craves her freedom — can she trust him to give it to her? Can she trust the wild man of rock with her heart? There’s only one way to find out. Dive into the wildfire!

My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book, and the primary reason I did was because of the hero.

Aidan Hawthorne, a name I absolutely adore, is the guitarist for the popular rock group, Sunfire. He also happens to be a shape-shifting firebird, and not only that, but he’s that rarest of all firebirds, the Phoenix. I don’t often go gaga over the heroes in my books, but I think a lot of that is simply because I don’t find a lot of them particularly sexy. Aidan, however, is totally the kind of guy that I would hook up with in real life if he showed up. He’s got a wonderful combination of tenderness and wild masculinity, and I just wanted to smuggle him away and take him home.

I was also pleased that, given how much I loved Aidan, Corinne worked for me as a heroine. She could have simply been one more martyr heroine, but she wasn’t. I loved watching her slowly realize just how much manipulation her father had done, and I was relieved that she didn’t choose to remain with him out of a sense of blind loyalty. Corinne also deserves some accolades, because I don’t think I could have remained sane with sisters like hers.

I really liked the romance here. We know from the beginning that there’s attraction between Aidan and Corinne, but they move gradually and at a reasonable, logical pace into love. What misunderstandings and conflicts that arise along the way are natural for the progression of their relationship, and the black moment near the end is quite emotional. The sex was hot, and really did enhance the developing relationships. The only caveat I had about the sex scenes was one near the end, where there’s some anal action and Aidan uses soap as a lube, which seems a bit uncomfortable and had me wincing in sympathy.

Connolly does tend to sequel-bait fairly heavily, not a huge surprise considering that this is a series about a rock band. For the most part she succeeds, giving us tantalizing glimpses of the rest of the band, but I never fully got a sense of who they were as people. Well, we learn quite a bit about Aidan’s brother, Ryan, but the rest were inigmas to me for the most part.

As for the non-romance plot, for the most part I liked it. My only real issue was that I felt that Corinne’s father was almost cartoonishly evil, and he was dealt with with such swift efficiency that I wondered why Aidan hadn’t just found some other way to end that particular threat.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a lot, and I’m very much looking forward to reading the second book in this series.