I’ve been reading J.R. Ward’s books for years, including the Black Dagger series that she’s most well known for, so Consumed was a nice alternative to her normal supernatural series. The book focuses on Anne, a former firefighter who’s coming to grips with herself and her new job as an arson investigator after she is no longer able to do the job she loved. While Ward also tells parts of the story from the point of view of Anne’s significant other and brother, I like the fact that she keeps this book focused to a single storyline, which Black Dagger books have deviated from in recent years. I also enjoyed feeling like I was watching the characters grow as people over the course of the book. Finally, Ward creates an interesting twist that provides closure to this particular story but leaves an overarching conflict for subsequent novels.