TEST
Andie J. Christopher’s Hot Under His Collar begins with event planner Sasha Finerghty in St. Bartholemew’s Catholic Church, making sure the wedding she’s coordinated is proceeding as planned, and mooning over Father Patrick Dooley. Sasha is the disappointing daughter in her family because she has yet to get married and start a family of her own, so she accepts a date from one of the groomsmen (who doesn’t turn her on) because she’s trying to distract herself from her attraction to Patrick.
Then funding is cut for the church’s pre-K program, so Patrick asks Sasha and Hannah, her business partner/best friend/heroine of the previous book, whether they can save it. They decide on a big bake sale fundraiser, but this means Patrick and Sasha have to spend some time together because she brings in cakes for him to try. And when she goes on the date with the groomsman, she takes him to the bar the Dooleys own, because Patrick helps out there. So now she has even more chances to think about how hot and yet unavailable he is.
Patrick is likewise bowled over by her, and any time the story switched to his point of view, I braced for the mental lusting. Unfortunately, while there are many ways to make me care about a heroine, telling me about her glossy hair, perfectly manicured hands, “fresh minty breath”, “elegant back” and “cherry-colored nipples” is not going to do it.
Like Sasha, Patrick is gorgeous, so she’s constantly turned on by his dimples, his green eyes, the way he grunts, and so on. He’s also completely non-judgmental about divorce, LGBTQ rights, and abortion, but there is no indication that this is because he’d gone through seminary, studied Catholic teachings in depth, and had come to his own conclusions. Instead, it’s because he is the hero of a modern romance, and no modern romance hero would hold the wrong views on those issues.
As for his bouts of horniness, while he feels periodically guilty about them, he doesn’t do much to keep himself from being led into temptation. He invites Sasha for drinks in private, winks at her, and fans the flames until they finally have sex in a scene where he asks her to touch herself while he watches. By then I was so uninterested in these two that I felt like a voyeur. And when she masturbates, he begins “chuffing”, which made me imagine him as Thomas the Tank Engine.
That said, the breezy style leads to some amusingly snarky moments. And then there is this great scene when a nun talks to Patrick about the paths not taken in life, and confides that before she took her vows, she was in love with a woman. She also tells him how she found meaning in the choice she made even though she recognizes the Church’s flaws.
“The institution itself is a false idol. But I also take comfort in the fact that it is ancient. There will be women after me who take vows and teach children and take care of the sick that no one else will touch.”
Patrick understood what she was saying. Human beings were wired for ritual, and he’d found purpose in being the conduit for the ancient. In the liminal spaces—especially the ones between life and death—he felt purpose.
This was exactly what I was hoping for when I picked up the book. I wanted this sort of well-written, evocative reflection and understanding. It’s a pity that 1. It happens more than two-thirds of the way through the book, and 2. It takes place between Patrick and the nun, not Patrick and Sasha.
Hot Under His Collar should appeal to readers who enjoyed the other stories in the series, since the hero and heroine of a previous book are prominently featured here. But for me, it was a tedious read, with no real conflict other than Sasha and Patrick going back and forth regarding his vow of celibacy. I guess when I want to read about a hot intelligent priest and some use of Catholicism other than it being the sole reason the hero and heroine aren’t tearing each other’s clothes off in the first chapter, I’ll stick with Tiffany Reisz.
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Grade: C-
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 25/07/21
Publication Date: 07/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm Marian, originally from Sri Lanka but grew up in the United Arab Emirates, studied in Georgia and Texas, ended up in Toronto. When I'm not at my job as a medical laboratory technologist, I read, write, do calligraphy, and grow vegetables in the back yard.
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Universally negative reviews have combined to cross this one off the TBR pile; good work Marian.
Thanks! I checked out the reviews on Goodreads, and a lot of them refer to a show called Fleabag, where the main character and a priest get together but break up. Apparently the author of the book said on social media that the book is meant to fix the relationship, so maybe fans of the show will enjoy this more.
So this book is basically fix-it fanfic?
Yep! On a less elevated plain, but similar to how all the Shakespearean tragedies were rewritten with happy endings in the 1700s. Generations never realized Cordelia actually dies at the end of King Lear!
Looks that way, if what I read is accurate. It would explain the lack of conflict, and why the characters have already met and started lusting after each other before the book even begins.
Ah yes, the hot priest. It’s well-done on Fleabag.
The premise actually did make me think of Fleabag and I was wondering if the author sold the ‘hot priest’ concept by talking that show into accounting. I didn’t know it was basically an AU of that relationship!
I know plenty of Catholics with those non judgmental views (including a couple of Priests) that part is not outside the realm of possibility. The rest just doesn’t do it for me tho lol
Personally, I’d like to see how those non-judgmental views came about. How he reconciled them with the official Church position on such topics, or what led him to decide that the official Church views weren’t relevant/important/correct.
So it’s not that it’s impossible for a priest to be pro-choice and an ally of marginalized people. It’s that in this book, there wasn’t enough development of this part of his character. I had to take it for granted that he’s the hero, so of course he’s non-judgmental, what else could he possibly be?
In Con Riley’s Charles: Learning to Love, the love interest is a man who has (in his words) left the ordination track while he takes stock of where he is and what he wants to do. (So he was intending to become a vicar, but has stopped the process.) That he’s a very spiritual person is never in any doubt, and it’s clear that there are some tenets of church doctrine he still struggles with, even though the Anglican Church has more “enlightened” views on gay clergy and gay marriage. The religious element of the story in no way overshadows the rest of the story, but it sounds like the author has given much more thought to the relevant issues than is the case in this book.
Oh, I read Hugo as Roman Catholic. I didn’t think confession and the term ‘padre’ were CoE things. Towards the end of the book, when he and Charles are discussing Hugo’s future, I thought their conversation touched on the possiblity of switching to a different church to enable marriage.
As a “cradle Episcopalian” (part of the Anglican communion), I can tell you that the Prayer of Confession is a standard part of the liturgy and some “high” churches (closer to Catholic ritual—or as we call it, “bells and smells” [incense]) also have confessional booths. I’m not saying the character you are referring to isn’t Catholic, but I am saying it’s conceivable he could be Episcopalian/Anglican.
/Here endeth the lesson.
I did wonder about High Church as a possibility, but with my very limited experience of religion (!), settled on RC, mainly due to the confessional booth scene. I think that the author had deliberately chosen to focus on Hugo’s faith being important to him rather than which church he belonged to.
I agree on that last point. But I have to say that I automatically assumed Hugo was Anglican High Church. Not sure why – maybe simply because CoE is “the norm” in England? (Insofar as any religion is, because increasingly, most of us don’t bother with it!)
I just read “Overture to Death”, a 1939 Ngaio Marsh mystery (got to love Little Free Libraries and the interesting assortment of books found there). One of the main characters is a high church C of E rector (see DDD comment), and he takes confessions from two of the other characters.
Exactly! This is one of the jobs of a good writer, as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, I don’t think editors at traditional publishing houses are really pushing their authors toward strong characterization. Nowadays, there seems to be a plague of, “He’s accepting. That’s the way it should be for a 21st century hero. Never mind if it makes sense or not. Moving on.”
On that note, I remember being a bit surprised hearing about an elderly sister lament that she thought it was wrong how women back in the 1950s were being pushed to have as many kids as possible, whether they could psychologically handle it or not. As a teacher back in the day, she noted over and over how hard it was on the older girls in her class- some of whom were responsible for 7+ younger siblings- to have to take on the dual roles of little mothers and students to the point where it was making their academic life and just plain childhood suffer. But see? She had a stated reason for coming to that conclusion despite the stated tenets of her ingrained faith. Fictional characters need those reasons too rather than automatic enlightenment.
That cover is horrible. For one thing the guy pictured looks like he’s a really smarmy git. For another, it doesn’t scream “man of the cloth having a crisis of faith”. #cartooncoverfail
Agreed. He’s smirking, and I have no idea why they’re so out of proportion compared to each other. Unless someone thought she might look like his shoulder-angel?
The shoulder-angel thing was what I thought…
There was a long discussion about this book at another website yesterday (the reviewer there liked it less than you, giving it a D). Here’s my comment: “Priests who are driven by passion to betray their vow of celibacy” is one of my favorite transgressive catnips, but one look at that cover (and the $10.99 ebook price!) had me deciding this would not be a book to add to the canon. One of the things that makes “priest romances” so delicious is the fight (by both the priest and the object of his affection) to NOT give in to temptation…and that cover conveys none of the gravitas & angst I want from a book where it’s a massively big deal when that vow is betrayed. As I’ve said before, I only had to look at the cover for Sierra Simone’s PRIEST (the ne plus ultra of priest romances, imho) to know there would be angsty heartache and smoking-hot sexy-times ahead.
Sierra Simone does that tension in a way that works well. I thought Priest was reasonably good but adored Sinner.
I didn’t expect The Thorn Birds, but yeah, I wanted more conflict about his attraction to her.