Overall Grade: A
Tropes: close proximity/roommates; smokejumper MMC; travel nurse FMC; angst; second chance; grump/sunshine; age gap
“Sometimes, for something beautiful to take to life and grow, everything around it has to be sacrificed. All we see is the destruction, but if you wait long enough — if you’re patient — magic happens.”
These words, prophetic and beautifully drawn, embody the truth of Jewel E. Ann’s From Air. This newest book, the first book of a new series — The Wildfire Series — is one of my favorite stories in 2024. I began reading Jewel E. Ann with her book, Look the Part. The witty banter between the uptight MMC and the fluidly intriguing and beguiling FMC was the draw in that story. Their immediate chemistry, the hate to love, the emotionally uptight MMC drive that story forward. Until a moment that has often been characterized as the JEA Effect — the moment in the story that comes from nowhere and takes the reader out emotionally. It’s usually shocking and rarely forecasted, so it turns your head deeper into the pages of her book. For me, that moment is where I fall more deeply in love with Ann’s storytelling.
From Air has the same feel, for me, as Look The Part. It isn’t the same story. It inhabits new worlds in the JEA universe: travel nurse and smokejumper. It’s even set in a different space, one that changes due to the FMC’s occupation. However, the witty banter that Ann writes well and the chemistry that feels complicated and messy are the mainstays of From Air. In those spaces, you find Ann’s brilliance as a writer with crisp and quotable prose. There is the JEA moment —- and it comes from nowhere. I’m usually able to see the foreshadowing of plot points, but, once again, she kept me off-balance. As a multi-year reader of romance, I loved it. My heart hurt for the characters, and the only promise I had of surviving this turn of the story was the knowledge that I was reading a romance — the promise of a HEA. And that happily ever after is perfect, more poetry in storytelling motion.
Calvin “Fitz” and Jaymes “Jamie” took me on a complicated journey filled with humor, tension, sadness, and pain. Other beautifully written characters, like their roommates Will and Maren, Fitz’s grandmother, and Jamie’s best friend, Melissa, add dimension to the story and provide hope for the future stories in this series.
As I said at the beginning of this review, From Air is one of my top five romances of 2024. Jewel E. Ann illustrates her dexterity in drawing stories that interrogate social norms, incite intense emotions, and beguile her readers. I can only look forward to the other books in this compelling series.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 