What started as a delightful, modern erotic romance quickly turned into Fifty Shades of Ground Hog Day.

Fire and Ice is a classic enemies-to-lovers story and is the first book in Jessica Prince’s The Locklaine Boys Series. This series is also a spinoff from her Colors series. 

Prince is a fabulous writer and deserves much more recognition than she is given throughout the romance community; she writes without cliche, which is desperately needed within the genre. That being said, character construction and development are Prince’s downfall. Written from both the hero’s and heroine’s points of view, the protagonists lack any depth of character and are portrayed as genuinely awful people. The heroine, Pepper, comes across as a self-entitled princess who lacks conviction. At the same time, Griffin, is an amoral douchebag.

This alone would have been enough for me to stop reading, but at the end of the day, the story’s repetition had me sending the book to the DNF pile. The sexual tension in a story of this genre drives readers to keep reading, but unfortunately, Prince’s eloquent prose is not enough to save her here. It felt as though most of the sex scenes were written as filler rather than to propel the plot or character development forward, which further left the tension between the protagonists wanting.

Had Prince not been such a good writer, I would have given this book 1 star and told you not to bother, but instead, this book is worth 2 stars and will do in a pinch at the airport.