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AfterEllen’s Summer of Love: “Twice Lucky” by Mardi Alexander

Every Friday through September, we’ll be posting a review of a lesbian/bi-themed romance novel as part of our Summer of Love. If you’ve missed any, you can read them here.

Twice Lucky, written by Mardi Alexander, takes us into the life of firefighter Mac or, as some like to call her, Mouse. Her life as a firefighter is filled with emergency calls to burning buildings, car crashes and explosions. In the first chapter, she is called to the scene of an accident with her partner Betts, where a pregnant woman is unconscious and trapped inside the car. Immediately, Mac calls to action, climbing into the car to help the woman. There is not much that scares Mac when it comes to “the job,” (which seems to be the term used often in the book, and considering the author is actually a firefighter, I’m taking her word for it) and once the pregnant woman is responsive and removed from the car, Mac and Betts take her and her boyfriend to the local hospital for further treatment.

The hospital is where Mac meets Dr. Sarah Macarthur, head of the Emergency room. Although they locked eyes and said hello, the seriousness of the situation gave no time for chit chat, and Sarah was on her way to treating the injured woman. Mac decides to stick around the hospital to finish her paperwork, so that she can check in on the injured woman later in the afternoon. That is when she introduces herself to Sarah and the sparks ignite.

The relationship between Mac and Sarah starts off very slow. At first, it’s mainly Sarah talking to her sister, Jean, about Mac and then Mac talking to her two friends Terri and Maree about Sarah. They had yet to go on a date and run into each other a couple times in the hospital. The pace of the relationship doesn’t seem to be blossoming too quickly at first, but then towards the middle of the book, you find out that Mac’s previous partner had died, so she is still recovering from that trauma and hesitant to move on. Once that was revealed, the beginning of the book and their relationship made much more sense.

As Mac and Sarah begin to delve into their relationship, they start to become closer to each other’s family and friends. Mac becomes particularly attached to Jean and her son, Thomas, who is deaf. Mac happens to know ASL because she had a brother who was deaf, but he died in a car accident when they were young. Being able to communicate with Thomas is something Sarah finds particularly attractive in Mac. Throughout the book you see how much love and adoration the couple has not only for each other, but for the people the care about.

Without spoiling the story too much, there are a couple of times that Mac is put in an extremely dangerous situation and Sarah has had to save her life. One of the times, unfortunately, involves Thomas. The book takes a huge twist near the end and leads you down a path you never expected, which made the book that much better.

Mardi Alexander does an excellent job of giving you detailed descriptions of people and places throughout the story. At times, though, it can feel a little winded, because you just want to get to the good stuff! She is from Australia, so there are moments that the verbiage doesn’t seem to make sense, or a slang phrase is used that I had no idea what it meant, but that made it even more fun.

While it got a little slow in some parts, overall this was an easy read with a great storyline, fun characters and a dramatic twist at the end. Five stars!

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