I have been slowly dipping my toes into the series pool. Since I have Hush, the first book in the multi-authored Do Not Disturb miniseries, and wanted to try out a Blaze, I jumped at the chance to read Kiss & Makeup. I am pleased to report giving up my Blaze! virginity was everything a first time should be: fun, exciting, inventive, and hot, and I can’t wait to do it again. Of course Kent’s book is a touch too quick, but such is the nature of the category romance and first times.

The story has three major characters: hunky Grammy-winning record producer Quentin Marks; the sweet Shandi Fossey, full of small town charm; and the Hush Hotel, the place for the young, the rich, and the horny. All three make this story fun, if it is the nature of Blaze to lean on characters to tell the story more than situations, I think I have found a glom.

Since leaving the family bar in Oklahoma to make her way in New York as a makeup artist in the entertainment industry, Shandi Fossey isn’t quite sure who she is, but she spends a lot of time trying to get past how she thinks others see her. After a night of flirting on the job with Quentin Marks at Hush Hotel’s bar Erotique, she finds herself reevaluating life, love, and sex. Her mental conversation is interrupted when her roommate, Evan Harcourt, arrives home and gets wrangled into giving his male opinion.

While all those deep thoughts are going on, Quentin is wondering many of the same things – but from a totally different place in his life. He is finally going home. After many years of hard work and groupies, Quentin is returning to Austin, Texas to create his own label. And therein lies the largest complication in the book – Shandi is trying to break in to the biz as Quentin is trying to break out. Should they each talk themslevs out of some down and dirty sex to ensure that no one gets hurt, or should they indulge in a few nights of pleasure? The answer is that the next night they are back at Erotique, Shandi serving, and Quentin wanting a doggy bag.

Quentin expects the groupies, meaningless sex, and people using him. Having been so long without being around an honest emotion, he is drawn to Shandi, well that and her legs. He sees something in her he has lost over the years. She is new and excited. She is determined, hungry, creative, and most of all hopeful. Quentin’s cynical bastard self wants to drink her up and touch that long-gone enthusiasm as much as he wants to enfold her in bubble wrap and never see her lose that gleam. As for Shandi, she wants to get there with her own map, on her own two feet, and prove to everyone (well, her family, anyway) that she did it, and did it her way. It is a really good thing Shandi had those killer legs because if she was short, I don’t think you could have seen her over the chip on her shoulder.

In between the bouts of hot and sweaty sex, we meet April, who is Evan’s girlfriend. Unfortunately, I found this secondary couple bland…at least they didn’t detract from Shandi and Quentin’s relationship, which, from the start shows the reader that these two like each other as people and connect in more than an “Insert Tab A into Slot B” sort of fashion. And that returns us to the largest complication in the book, how much of yourself do you give up to find your HEA? Is the right answer standing your ground and living where you think you need to be in order to have the career you want? Is it always the woman who has to give up something to make a relationship work? Is it better to fail than never try at all? So again, what do you do?

Kiss & Makeup is a fun read with a simple plot that manages to be complex in emotion and heart. And who can argue with hot sex in a hotel library? As the third book in this series, it reads fine as a stand-alone. As for me, I’m going to look for books one and two.