After the Fire

Hidden Cove Series, Volume 1

By: Kathryn Shay

Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer

Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Kathryn Shay spent five years riding fire trucks with a large city fire department, eating in their firehouses and interviewing hundreds of America's Bravest. Listen to the novels that resulted from her intense relationship with firefighters!

Three firefighters from the Malvaso family are trapped in a burning building and almost lose their lives. After they are rescued, they decide to change the way they've been living. Mitch, the eldest, wants to make some decisions about his dysfunctional marriage and spend more time with his kids. Jenn decides to have a baby - with her best friend, Grady. And Zach, the bad boy of the group, vows to make up for his past sins and become a better man.

©2010 Kathryn Shay (P)2013 Kathryn Shay

Okay listen, not my norm

This listen was ok, I typically prefer a little more mystery. I don't really care for a predictable storyline. The author did surprise me on a couple of occasions.

Favorite of them all

This story is my favorite out of all the fire fighter books you will read in this series. Good books over all

After The Fire

Where does After the Fire rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It is definitely one of my top 5! This is my first book by Kathryn Shay and I loved it! The story had several stories lines going on and the town is even a character.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Mitch. He had such a hard time with keeping his life at work and at home together. His wife was awful even to her children. The author had to make her this way to justify Mitch falling for another woman. While I'm not a fan of that story line, his wife was really a bad person even to her own children.

What about Jeffrey Kafer’s performance did you like?

I absolutely love Jeffrey Kafer as a narrator. He does such a great job with all the characters. I can fully believe that each one has a different tone and personality.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I wanted to but couldn't.

Any additional comments?

Great story which means I have to get the rest of the books in this series!

After the Fire

Any additional comments?

The first reaction I have to this book is that it is written by a teenager with dreams of sexy firemen, love, etc., fundamentally immature thinking about serious life issues and recovery from trauma. The ideas are there, but the execution is a bit eye-rolling. I plan on sticking with this series simply to see how, or if, the author matures. The series contains a bunch of books, they can’t be all this valley girl.

The book is the first in the Hidden Cove series, and begins with a massive fire resulting in firefighter deaths. Three firefighter survivors are siblings, who After the Fire, vow to change their lives.

Adequately read by Jeffrey Kafer, After the Fire is eleven hours of listening. Kafer does okay with female voices, but basically he does the best he can with a mediocre book. I don’t often have trouble getting through an audiobook, but this one is an effort. I’m hitting fast-forward a bit.

Siblings and spouses acting like immature teenagers

As exciting as the action was and as thoroughly written and described as the world of first responders were, I couldn’t get past the immaturity of the “adults” in this story. Mitch was in an unhappy marriage and instead of either really trying to fix it or get out of it, he starts lusting after a new cop on the force. Gen wants to have a baby so asks her best friend to be the father. They practically live together anyway and occasionally sleep (and I mean actual sleep) in the same bed. They tell each other everything and yet they both say they’re “just friends”. You can see where that one is going. And last, there’s the younger brother (whose name I can’t remember.) who after surviving a horrific accident, he realizes that he needs to grow up and wants his family back. The family he didn’t give a bleep about as he had various girlfriends all while his wife was pregnant. And yet he’s shocked that his ex won’t “give him a second chance” after all this time and all the horrible things he did to her.
The worst part was the budding relationship between Mitch and New Cop. Shay describes the feelings between them as romantic! Hello! Mitch is married! Shay also conveniently writes Mitch’s wife as a spoiled shrew that ignores her children making it easier to “accept” how Mitch is feeling towards New Cop. 🙄 But what really made me DNR this book is this: New Cop was married to a man that cheated on her. Her husband confessed to her that he slept with someone else and the first thing she said was, “How many times?” What??!! Why does it matter how many times he did it?! That’s not the question you ask! She totally focused on “that bimbo he slept with” instead of questioning her husband’s lack of fidelity and loyalty and respect for her and their vows and so many other things that has nothing to do with the other woman!! Shay wrote Angela (younger brothers ex) this way too! She focused on “that bimbo you were screwing while I was in labor!” argument and they’ve been divorced for 2 years! Smh 🤦🏽‍♀️. I can’t even. I’m not interested in characters that are too immature to root for. It’s too bad because Shay seems to have done some real research on the lives of first responders. That, to me, was where the real magic was.

I kept waiting for the story to become better.

Would you try another book from Kathryn Shay and/or Jeffrey Kafer?

No

What was most disappointing about Kathryn Shay’s story?

There are numerous "main" characters and the book jumped around enough to make it hard to follow.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Jeffrey Kafer?

Jeffrey Kafer was a decent narrator.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from After the Fire?

Storyline; storylines were hard to follow.

Straight out Romance Novel

What disappointed you about After the Fire?

This is a straight-out romance novel. 80% of the dialogue is about relationships and romance with the occasional non-romance bit of material thrown in (I stuck with it more than 3 hours in, hoping it would evolve but no). I wish that the story was clearly labelled "ROMANCE NOVEL" so those listerners who want such a story can enjoy it and those of us who want mostly story (and are fine with occasional romantic interludes) could avoid it.

This is the best I could do.

Will not finish the book nor will I buy anything else by this author. The characters are cliche and the dialogue predictable. I will not even finish this book.

A disappointment

This reads like a teen's perception of life and love. Real people do learn to build a better life after tragedy. This is an immature look at how things work out (or fail to) . Any survivor could have written their story better than this. Terrible -- missed opportunity. Lack of any research on life after loss. Maybe this is only "a wanna-be- fire fighter's book."