Sunday, April 3, 2016

Brief Thoughts: Crazy Cool

Crazy Cool

by Tara Janzen
Book 2 of Steele Street

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  4.0 Stars


Steele Street and Tara Janzen presents to us another crazily exciting romantic suspense packed with guns, cars, gorgeous military men, a thrill ride, romance, and steamy sex.

It is absurdly ridiculous how much I enjoyed this book despite it's flimsy plot, choppy progression, messy narration, and almost non-existent resolution. But the Steele Street boys are hunks, our heroine is somehow a refreshingly unique brand of airhead that I found endearing and weirdly funny, and the tone of the entire story was somehow wonderfully comedic... in a good way.


The Story in Brief:
Thirteen years ago Christian Hawkins and Katya Dekker spent an amazing month of romance together before Christian was arrested for murder. He was then pardoned two years later and went on to go from being a car thief to a military man. Now as a special force secret operative working out of Steele Street under the guise as a car salesman, Christian has been pulled away from a current Colombian assignment to play bodyguard for Katya Dekker at the behest of someone who has high up connections.

Katya Dekker has lived in her mother's shadow for her entire life, but has managed to make a success of herself as an art dealer. But events transpire when she returns to Denver to host an art show for local talent, Nikki McKinney, ranging from exploding trees to the death of an old acquaintance and reuniting with Christian "Superman" Hawkins (How much do I love the nicknames of the Steele Street boys in this series?). And now, the murder of Jonathan Traynor III from thirteen years ago that had landed Christian in prison has resurfaced with a new death and new dangers and both Katya and Christian are caught up inside it all.


My Thoughts:
The murder mystery was pretty straight forward, even if not entirely predictable. Which is why I had a little trouble finding a connect between how we could have gotten off track of the main conflict so easily (or so readily). For a good portion of the book after the midpoint, it was almost as if the murder mystery of present (that was connected to the murder of thirteen years ago) was completely forgotten. Sure, the sex scenes were steamy and the entire side tangent with Kid and Nikki were welcome... but for that one long moment, it felt like we were in an entirely different story.

Then we proceed back into the main conflict, but as the book comes to an end, everything just spirals out of control.

But the fact is, I was entertained. Very much so.

It never occurred to me that Christian Hawkins could have a comedic tone of narration, but he did and it worked. I found his entire situation with Katya Dekker very amusing--the descriptions of how much of a slob Kat turned out to be while she eats crackers and drinks tea in the passenger of his muscle car; to her incredible transformation from wildly untamed vagrant to sophisticated princess within ten minutes of locking herself in the bathroom.

Sure, Katya was a bit of a pushover and possessed every quality of weak damsel in distress that would normally annoy the heck out of me. But her innocent honesty and sincere responses and strange behavioral antics makes her a lot more lovable than I would have expected.

Yes. There was a bemusing comedic touch to the narration that I don't remember reading from the first book, Crazy Hot. Sure, it was haphazard, messy, sometimes unfocused, but it was entertaining all the same.

And you know, I really appreciated that.

This wasn't the most inspiring book in the world (nor did it really have much of a plot), but it was definitely lots of fun.




This review was originally posted at Ani's Book Abyss / BookLikes in June 2015.



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