Hot to the Touch

by Jennifer Greene

Phoebe Schneider is a baby masseuse; she works especially with traumatized babies. So when she's approached to help Fox Lockwood -- a man through and through -- she's resistant. But Phoebe can't deny helping someone in need. In the process, Phoebe and Fox come to realize that he isn't the only one in need of healing.

Genres: Romance, Harlequin, Contemporary Romance, Harlequin Desire

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Winner of over 15 national awards, including the RWA Hall of Fame and the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award, Jennifer Greene weaves real issues, warm characters common-life humor, and page-turning romance and suspense into her stories.

Jennifer sold her first book in 1980, and since then has sold over 85 books in the contemporary romance genre. She won her first professional writing award from RWA, a “Silver Medallion” in 1984, followed by over 20 nominations and awards —including achieving RWA’s HALL OF FAME status, and the most coveted Nora Roberts LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD.

Jennifer has regularly been on a variety of bestseller lists, and has written for Harlequin, Avon, Berkley and Dell. Her books have sold all over the world in over 20 languages. She also accumulated a number of pseudonyms—most recognizably JENNIFER GREENE, but also JEANNE GRANT and JESSICA MASSEY.

She was born in Michigan, started writing stories in 7th grade, and graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in English and Psychology. The University honored her with their “Lantern Night Award”, a tradition developed to honor fifty outstanding women graduates each year. Exploring issues and concerns for women today is what first motivated her to write, and she has long been an enthusiastic and active supporter of women’s fiction, which she believes is an unbeatable way to reach out and support other women.

Jennifer lives in Michigan, just a short distance from Lake Michigan, with her husband Lar.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
(1)romance

aka Jeanne Grant

Reviews

[Anya Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my go-to reads. Please write more books for the Lockwood Brothers!!!

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Rounded up for originality.
Phoebe just kept surprising everybody whenever she showed up.
But she is a bit too “out there” for me sometimes.
Hard to believe in these two .. and the ending was too abrupt.
Fox’s family was great and the scene where he cooks dinner for his mother is too funny.
[Ultimately too steamy and the plot didn’t hold up well in that environment .. (seems the erotica crowd was liking this one.)]

[Phaney · Rating 2 out of 5]

2012 Review:

Holy f***ing hell! It’s been three and a half years since I read this and… I have to go back on nearly everything I wrote then about it. What is this I don’t even.

I am just so shocked right now. See, I just finished this book (thank god) and thought I’d look at what I wrote last time before writing my notes up. Yeah, I knew I liked it back then; that’s why I picked it out to re-read. But… Just no.

I mean, all the other things I gushed about, no I don’t see them here either, but WTF was I saying about the wonderful deep viewpoint? Where? I must have been on a diet of total crap back then, seriously starved for any sort of viewpoint. ’Cause this? Was not particularly deep or evocative. At all. And voices you can forget right away. I compared this to the excellent style of Suzanne Brockmann back then, and that just makes me squirm and wonder if that means my memories of her awesome skill as a writer are complete nonsense as well. I just can’t believe that. Dammit.

I was gushing about the lovable side characters… which are about as deep as a puddle. On tiled floor. That is uneven so the water runs off. That’s about how important they are to the story as well. And how much they appear.

And I totally hated Phoebe this time. What the hell is going on?

*huff* Well. Anyway, the first thing the book lost points for this time around was the entirely unsafe sex. Pregnancy or STDs are not even a consideration. One might argue that it was a different time and back then people were not as alert about the medical dangers. Except for the fact that pregnancy has always been a concern when having sex and this was published in freaking 2005!

Which also makes me shake my head at the assumption that “masseuse” equals “whore”. That made it seem like it was written in the eighties, maybe. In a pinch the nineties, perhaps. But I am fairly certain that by the time 2005 rolled around the term was already “massage therapist” anyway. (Of course an eighties hero would have been a brutal jerk and Fox was as nice and bland and average as you expect from brain fluff of its time. Yes, I called him average. I am totally going back on “one of the most broken heroes ever” from last time. Bleh.)

God, we must get this back on track. I was still hanging in there, deciding that this was a mostly okay book, even if felt deplorably shallow. Sure, Fox had all this horrible trauma and physical issues to deal with (the latter of which in the end seemed to fade away like magic), but aside from that? We were back to struggling with gender roles. And I am so f***ing tired of male/female gender roles. Okay, in this case that constituted actually a huge plot element, the way Phoebe saw her sensual nature as something unseemly in a woman (paraphrasing this wildly). That didn’t change the fact that we had to deal with the stereotypes again. And sexual carelessness. Grr, I can’t let go of that one.

The romance-y thing also happened out of nowhere. Gay romance is not a stranger to that, of course. Bad or average books will have protagonists falling in love at the drop of a hat. (Hell, my own last story does it, this same kind of denial/struggling thing. Although I hope to hell I’m better at it.) The fact that it’s a common plot element does not make it feel any more real. In this case it was like… So apparently these two were a match made in heaven and when they meet they just fit against their will. And yet this masqueraded as your normal, falling-in-love kind of romance. Um, okay. In the end it had nothing to do with who they actually were, no love happened because of who this other person was. That’s the letdown for me.

I also got a little tired of the way the denial was always phrased. “She did not want him to stay. Her heart did not hurt at the thought that he might leave.” As a stylistic tool, this is fine on occasion, as long as it’s poignant and either unambiguous or subtle. But to use this all the time makes for boredom, irritation and sometimes haziness about what the f*** the character is feeling anyway. People are not necessarily in touch with their feelings and some may deliberately deny them. That’s perfectly fine. But either be more subtle or lay it out straight! Don’t do this weird “opposite of what I say” thing on a constant basis. It just makes the character look stupid. If you’re gonna lie to yourself, put some effort into it, dammit. No, it’s not cute and funny when it goes on and on and on.

Gah.

I think at that point I kind of gave up. I merely finished the book. And I might not have ended up quite as foaming at the mouth over this if I hadn’t looked at my previous verdict. ’Cause this s***? F***ing twilight zone.

It honestly scares me that I can’t rely on my previous judgements at all anymore. Not everything’s a miss but, god. When it’s scary, it’s scary.

[Darla Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book needs to be a part of a series. Phoebe and Fox are hurting in different ways. The older Lockwood Brothers decide to intervene for their younger brother and teacher turned army vet. The power of touch is very powerful. And the porch scene is smoking hot!

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

just enough of a story to feel the depth to each character with the romance enhancing the story instead of overpowering it...great quick read!

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it - I read it again every year. Wondering if Hero's brothers got their own stories?