Fire & Ice

by Gaelle Cathy

After a vicious encounter in New York City, the Beckett family, including twenty-year-old college student Emma, retreat to New Hampshire seeking a place to heal and more peaceful surroundings.
Turns out, the move creates more upheaval when Emma meets glass artist Charlie Campbell. The spark is immediate but Charlie’s reluctance and Emma’s personal history make for a bumpy start to their romance.
Just as their love blooms, a dark family secret is exposed that threatens to destroy not only Emma and Charlie’s relationship, but Emma’s relationship with her family.
Will Emma and Charlie’s love survive the secret’s exposure
Does love really conquer all?

ebook

First published January 31, 2014

About the author

Born in the South of France, Gaëlle now lives near big city Lyon. Early, she developed a passion for the English language and the USA, which she often visited. The TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer sealed those two passions in written words when she began writing fan fiction. She wrote over 70 fanfiction pieces over the course of 6 years before finally leaving the safety net that it had become.
Her first novel, When the River Flows out of its Bed, was released in 2011, followed a year later by Legacy, a 500,000 word urban fantasy under the pen name GC Lehane. Fire and Ice was released in 2014. One Breath at a Time came out one year later in May 2015 and That Week in Acapulco followed in December 2015. A Little Bit of Grey was released in the spring of 2016 and Three to Tango in 2020. A new urban fantasy Endless War comes out in March 2021, and a new romance What Happened Next is due in Spring 2021.
From 2016 she began translating her novels in French, her native tongue.
A lover of animals, outdoors and music, Gaëlle takes long walks through country paths and spends the rest of her time petting her many cats.

Reviews

[Loek Krancher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story has an unique concept and this is one of the reasons why this book is so amazing. It's about finding love but not one without a lot of complications. They have to deal with situations which you can hope that this will never happen to you. There is a dark past, an awful family secret, confusion and injustice. Can they walk away from the consequences of the past? Will the past destroy any happiness they might have dreamed of? It's not only grief but also a lot of happy moments and a lot of furry babies. You will cry, you will laugh, you want to scream and yell. You will not want to miss this story. It's captivating and the plot is very well written.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on reviews from an earlier edition of this book, I knew going into it that it was reputed to be "controversial." That's an accurate tag. There's a high emotional, intellectual, possibly even spiritual hurdle to clear here, from the reader's perspective. I do think Ms. Cathy laid the groundwork to make clearing said hurdle possible from a narrative standpoint, but whether or not individual readers will be able to make the leap...well, it's tricky.

This book definitely is an interesting thought experiment, but it's difficult to really talk about that experiment without spoiling the mystery. Attentive readers who go into the book on high alert (as I did) will be able to figure out what's going on very early. Thanks to foreshadowing, I believe I became certain of it around page 48. My suggestion would be to dial the alert level down, if possible. My awareness tended to color every action taken by the leads, and I think the book works better if you're able to go into it blind. Then again, the foreknowledge did give me more run-up time to clear the aforementioned hurdle. If I hadn't had that, I probably would've needed an extra twenty pages of denouement to process everything.

The characters themselves were all well-developed, though I would've liked a few more interactions with Emma's mother, Elisabeth, prior to the climax. I particularly enjoyed the loving, supportive relationship between Emma and her younger sister, Jessica. While some of the side characters were only briefly sketched (ex-boyfriends, Uncle Harry), I nevertheless felt I had an understanding of who they were as people, which isn't always easy to accomplish in a book of this length.

The novel's exposition was delivered quite well. Very little was actually needed, and most of that came in the form of conversation between the characters, which made it not only more natural, but more interesting as well. Room/building descriptions were typically only heavily detailed when the information related to the main characters (personal items liked stuffed animals on beds), which was also rather welcome; nothing kills pacing quite like a two-page description of the wood grain in a cabinet. Thankfully, there's none of that here.

Editing and proofreading were relatively strong in the book. There were some errors, but they were few and far between.

So, overall, I enjoyed this book, though I'm still having a difficult time with the central premise. I'm just not sure whether I made it over the hurdle or not; I may have hit my hit my head on the way down. Either way, the issue is mine, not the author's. I have to commend her for coming up with what was, to me, a new idea for a romance novel, even if it's not an idea I'm fully prepared to embrace.

[Rayene Ziadi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I recently won 'Fire and Ice' in the Goodreads First Reads Giveaway.
It's about a girl named Emma who comes with her family to Franklin to et away from their drama in NYC,and here she meets Charlene a glass artist, who Emma finds solace in her company and is amazed by her talent.
Here's my honest review:
Awkward,the whole book was plain awkward; everything felt too unnatural the dialogue was awful and i gotta say it was quite predictable, *Halfway through i knew that her mom was raped and the family secret is that they're sisters*
So there was no plot twist for me which is my favorite thing in a book, here nothing surprised me and it was quite dull and cheesy at times!
the only thing that appealed to me was the variety of the characters.
I wouldn't recommend this book!

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently won 'Fire and Ice' in the Goodreads First Reads Giveaway.

This is totally different from any romance books that I have read, but am not about to write a blurb as to what the story is about. I always fear of spoiling for others. Although I wasn't too keen on certain aspects of this book, it will not stop me from reading more books by Cathy Gaelle.

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

No. Badly written, no emotion... crappy story line.... parts of the book I wasn't able to understand, they just made no sense.... worst ending I've ever come across.

[Alison Lane]

not my kind of book only read a few pages