Getting Hotter by Elle Kennedy (Out of Uniform #8)
Released: November 20, 2012
Erotic Contemporary Romance
Samhain

Reviewed by Mandi

Earlier this year, I read my first Elle Kennedy book, Feeling Hot and immediately purchased her back list and read all of her Out of Uniform series. I adore this author’s voice. She writes such sexy, sexy heroes who are all Navy SEALs. Hello!. Very alpha and cocky, but she pairs them up with women that know how to handle them. They also have great friendships with their fellow SEALs, something I always like. (and by friendships I mean, they are so friendly they have ménages all the time. Total win. Although this one is ménage free.) I really think this series is written just for me *wink*

Getting Hotter is my favorite one yet. Our hero Seth Masterson is a bad boy SEAL.

“What’s he like?”

“He’s…” she sighed. “…the consummate bad boy. Smokes, hardly ever shaves, says what’s on his mind, rough around the edges,”

And I gobbled him up. No really. I couldn’t get enough of him. He has a hard edge to him. He takes no bull shit. He has been lusting after part-time dance instructor and part-time bartender Miranda for months. He wants in her pants and he has no problem telling her that. The problem is, she says no,  which is new for him. Miranda dated a bad boy in the past, which left her with twin newborns and the father nowhere to be found. Now the twins are six, and she has to put them first. There is also the fact that Seth doesn’t like kids, including hers. 

But circumstances change when her apartment floods and she ends up crashing at his apartment with her kids for a few days. Being in close quarters with Seth makes it hard to resist him.

This book is just plain hot. Great sexual tension, great sex scenes. Seth’s hard edges stick, but he gets romantic towards the end too. One of the big things in this book is that Seth doesn’t get along well with kids. I can see how some readers might not like this aspect about him but to me it came across really realistic. A single guy, living with another SEAL, sleeping with women on a regular basis might not be into kids. What I really like is that Miranda gets in his face about it. It’s all out in the open. She knows he just tolerates them so he can get in her pants. As I read however, I needed Seth to actually get closer to the kids to make it a believable HEA and I really didn’t know how that was going to happen. But we learn some dark things about Seth’s past which puts things more into perspective. It all works out, and Seth’s evolution into coming to care for her kids is very realistic and cute scenes ensue:

“Fine. I wanna play with my dolls and make their hair pretty so they can dance at the recital.”

God help him.

From the little smirk she gave him, he knew Sophie expected him to recoil in horror. Maybe revert back to the Seth she’d called mean and tell her to get lost.

When he didn’t answer right away, she crossed her skinny arms over her chest and said, “I knew you wouldn’t wanna.” She scowled. “You wouldna be good at it anyway.”

Seth raised a defiant brow, then squatted down so they were at eye level. “Sophie, I’m a United States Navy SEAL. Know what that means?”

She shifted uneasily, then shook her head.

“It means I can do whatever I set my mind on, and if you think I can’t give your dolls some awesome hairstyles, then I’m ready to prove you wrong.”

We also get a nice supporting story line with Dylan (Seth’s roommate) and another person he is interested in. I’m not going to say who, I’ll let you find out on your own. But I’m dying for their book. Dying.

If you are looking for a very sexy, contemporary read, Getting Hotter is the book for you. I also recommend this entire series. The first few are very short novella length, but the past two have been novel size and really well done. This has become one of my most anticipated erotic series.

Rating: B+

Recent Reviews:
Fiction Vixen – B
The Book Pushers – B-
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