Hot Stuff by Janet Evanovich and Leanne Banks: 3.5/5
Cate Madigan is a 26 years old woman, studying to get her teaching degree and working part-time in a bar at night. She's swore off of men, because they're a distraction and messy, but her family keeps matching her up with potential boyfriends. Her roomate is a drag-queen singer who attracts most of the bar's business, and is in need of a house-sitter for when he's out-of-town performing... the arrangement suits Cate fine, till the day Marty leaves town precipitedly, after receiving strange phone calls. Then, Kellen McBride appears in her bar and starts getting close with some purposes in mind. The next thing she knows, Marty sends her a very ugly dog named Beast to insure her safety...Genre: contemporary romance, comedy
Series: none so far that I know of
Review: sorry for the crappy synopsis... didn't know what to come up at the end... So, this book was all right in my opinion. It had it funny moments where I did laugh out loud, but that's to be expected from Ms Evanovich and Ms Banks. I'd say the book sounds a lot more like most of Ms Evanovich's books though with a very similar style. All in all, you'll get a good laugh, but it's not the best book by either author.
The Character - Cate's character was okay, except for the fact where she swore off man. I mean, I understand why, but when someone's yummy as Kellen storms into your life, don't hesitate too much. I also thought either Cate was very ignorant or naive, and a bit stupid - maybe to fit the story better. Otherwise, she was okay... nothing that particular about her.
Kellen was yummy. He reminded me a bit of Morelli, but kinder and gentler. Something that I don't get tho... is that one moment, he said his family was dead (all of them, parents + 6 sisters), but it didn't state how... but I wonder if it wasn't an error. Anyway, his past wasn't discussed much, which made him a bit intriguing. What bothers me the most though was how he seemed to have fallen in love with Cate... but I think that's more concerning the story...
There's also a lot of other characters, such as Cate's 2 best friends, Pugg and Marty... All interesting characters, but that we don't get to know in depth.
The Story & Writing - The writing reminded me a lot of Stephanie Plum. It's not a bad thing, but the story just wasn't long enough. Some few stuff was also pretty obvious to the reader, but not the characters, which I found a bit unbelievable... and there were some inconsistencies that were annoying. For example, Julie's a Southerner and is supposed to have this very thick accent. This is portrayed writtenly in the first sentence of her dialogue, but once you start the second sentence, it'll be back to normal. For example, she says "dawg" in her first sentence, and then, it will revert to "dog" in the rest of her lines... which is just weird. Finally, the ending seemed a bit rushed, which is quite sad, considering the book was quite short and there was no reason to rush it.
The Cover - It's nice and it fits the book :D
Am I keeping this book? Undecided so far... probably, because I'm a book hogger...
Anything else? Well, this issue was brought up with Ms Evanovich previous release, Motor Mouth I think... the font is quite large in the book, much larger than usual... the book is already pretty thin, compared to most books out on the market. If you consider the font size, the story is really short and so, I do feel a bit cheated.
