Review: A heat you will enjoy reading about!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 8, 2012
Deep Autumn Heat by Elisabeth Barrett is her debut contemporary romance set in a picturesque, sleepy fishing village in New England.  It is the first book in her Star Harbor series, which revolves around four, dangerously gorgeous brothers, and their journey towards love.Our first sexy heartthrob brother is Sebastian Grayson; handsome, arrogant and renowned Master Chef. Amongst his brothers he is just Seb, one of the Grayson `bad boys' when young. In many ways, he has the world at his feet and his hugely successful career explains his borderline, obnoxious behaviour. Yet, he has not completely embraced his true potential, and is largely directed by his entourage of `staff', rather than showing initiative. Tall, powerfully built, bright green eyes, and devilishly seductive, women have always fallen at his feet, until he meets Lexie.Fabulous fire-cracker, Lexie Meyers; our heroine with spunk, wit and kindness in abundance. She is the owner of her own restaurant LM Kitchen, and has a heart filled with warmth and generosity, despite being been badly damaged in the past. Emotionally scarred, she is understandably guarded and careful around men. As Sebastian enters and creates havoc in her ordered world, maintaining her tight hold on resistance to his well-perfected charms became increasingly difficult. He is known as a womaniser, but, as happens in romance novels, he `finally meets' the one woman who can challenge his solo outlook on life, a woman he craves and wants to possess.Their sparky repartee between the two Chefs was wonderful. It was delightful and frequently funny to see Seb  put in his place by the feisty Lexie. They also challenged each other to overcome vulnerabilities, to move forward from their `safe' worlds, to take chances, on life and in love.With their common love of creating food and owning their own restaurants, it was believable that Seb and Lexie's culinary passion would overflow into their physical passion. Their love-making was written beautifully, with a scarce amount of detail.Books starring siblings always attract me. I love to see how family dynamics are captured, especially when it's brothers. These boys are all drop dead gorgeous, of course, but also very emotionally intelligent - an extremely rare (and a tad unbelievable) quality in men.As is often the case with the first book in a series, time taken to lay future books' foundations, can often be at the expense of the novel's story. Deep Autumn Heat was a delicious, easy read. Despite trying to create tension with a few nefarious sub-plots, it was light, predictable, and not particularly challenging. However, I'm confident this will only get better, the more Elisabeth Barrett writes. I am looking forward to reading the next instalment, Blaze of Winter, which will be the story of Theo, Seb's twin.(Deep Autumn Heat was received as an ARC through Net Galley for an honest review(