Jenn's Review: Wild Ride

Summary: Mary Alice Brannigan doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Nor does she expect to find that Dreamland, the decaying amusement park she’s been hired to restore, is a prison for the five Untouchables, the most powerful demons in the history of the world. Plus, there’s a guy she’s falling hard for, and there’s something about him that’s not quite right.

But rocky romances and demented demons aren’t the only problems in Dreamland: Mab’s also coping with a crooked politician, a supernatural raven, a secret government agency, an inexperienced sorceress, an unsettling inheritance, and some mind-boggling revelations from her past. As her personal demons wreck her new found relationship and real demons wreck the park, Mab faces down immortal evil and discovers what everybody who’s ever been to an amusement park knows: The end of the ride is always the wildest.


Review: Whatever I was expecting when I picked up Wild Ride, this wasn't it. I'm notorious for not reading the dust flaps before I start a book, especially if it's an author I like ~ why spoil the plot?!? So sometimes, case in point, I get taken completely surprise. Both of Crusie's & Mayer's previous collaborations are different from each other, so too is Wild Ride. It's Buffy meets Bones... in an odd way.

It has all the classic action and romance of a Crusie Mayer novel, but this time the romance is not between the two main characters. Both Mab and Ethan have other romantic interests and it is refreshing to see the Crusie Mayer team write for two couples.

The plot is topsy turvy and sometimes overly complicated. There is lots of plot exposition that is alluded to but never really supplied. Often times it felt like the reader was set down in the middle of an ongoing saga. There is a twist that I saw coming thirty pages in, but it was still and interesting reveal and well played out.

I'm not sure how to feel about Mab. She's not an easy character with whom to identify. Her responses and behaviors would seem to indicate that she has Asperger's but it may just be a product of her upbringing and not knowing bothered me throughout the book. Actually, I would have liked to get to know all of the characters a little better, demons included (I loved the squabling demons!), as they were all fascinating.

The wit of this writing team makes it an entertaining read. All in all, if you enjoy shenanigans, romance, action, and a few demons, this is a great, light summer book for you.

*Also, If you are new to the Crusie Mayer team, I cannot recommend their second novel, Agnes and the Hitman, highly enough.

Final Take: 3.75/5

Jenn's Review: Don't Look Down

Summary: Lucy Armstrong is a director of television commercials who's just been recruited to finish a four-day action movie shoot. But she arrives on the set to discover that the directing staff has quit, the make-up artist is suicidal, the stars are egomaniacs, the stunt director is her ex-husband, and the lead actor has just acquired as an advisor a Green Beret who has the aggravating habit of always being right.

Green Beret Captain JT Wilder had thought that hiring on as a military consultant for a movie star was a good deal: easy money and easier starlets. Instead he has to babysit a bumbling comedian, dodge low-flying helicopters, and resist his attraction to a director who bears a distracting resemblance to Wonder Woman. Then the CIA calls and he realizes that somebody is taking “shooting a movie” much too literally.

Review: I wanted to read this book because I stumbled across the second collaboration of Crusie & Mayer, Agnes and the Hitman, and loved it. This is most certainly their first co-authored work as it does not have the fluidity of the second. Whereas I found their writing styles meshed well in Agnes, I was far more aware of the switching of voices here.


The novel opens and you feel like you've been dropped in the middle of a chapter. I'm a fan of NOT reading the jacket blurb before starting the book ~sometimes I'll read the blurb before purchasing a new author, but I prefer to let the author's story unfold on it's own with no preconceptions~ but it's hard to do that with this book. It takes a good few pages to get ones bearings (With Agnes the title pretty much gave you the need-to-know plot exposition). I also didn't find these characters as likable as those in their second book nor the mystery as intriguing. It felt like the formula, though contextually far fetched (a director of commercials is called in to finish up the directing a feature film?!?), was laid out a little too early thus making the whole thing a little predictable.


All in all, the read was good fun. I certainly hope that their continued collaboration matures with persistence. I don't know that I'd re-read this one, but it made me want to pick up Agnes and the Hitman again. I recommend you do the same.


3.7/5.0

Jenn's Review: Agnes and the Hitman

Summary: from Amazon.com

Take one food writer named Cranky Agnes, add a hitman named Shane, mix them together with a Southern mob wedding, a missing necklace, two annoyed flamingos, and a dog named Rhett and you’ve got a recipe for a sexy, hilarious novel about the disastrous side of true love… Agnes Crandall’s life goes awry when a dognapper invades her kitchen one night, seriously hampering her attempts to put on a wedding that she’s staked her entire net worth on. Then a hero climbs through her bedroom window. His name is Shane, no last name, just Shane, and he has his own problems: he’s got a big hit scheduled, a rival trying to take him out, and an ex-mobster uncle asking him to protect some little kid named Agnes. When he finds out that Agnes isn’t so little, his uncle has forgotten to mention a missing five million bucks he might have lost in Agnes’s house, and his last hit was a miss, Shane’s life isn’t looking so good, either. Then a bunch of lowlifes come looking for the money, a string of hit men show up for Agnes, and some wedding guests gather with intent to throw more than rice. Agnes and Shane have their hands full with greed, florists, treachery, flamingos, mayhem, mothers of the bride, and—most dangerous of all—each other. Agnes and the Hitman is the perfect combination of sugar and spice, sweet and salty—a novel of delicious proportions.

Review:

I know, I don't read a lot of chick-lit, but this is chick-lit with crime and adventure thrown in.

Grandson: Has it got any sports in it?
Grandfather: Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture,
revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles!
Grandson: Doesn't sound too bad. I'll try and stay awake.
Grandfather: Oh, well, thank you. That's very kind of you.
Your vote of confidence is overwhelming. ~The Princess Bride

It was the title that caught my attention, so I bought it on a whim. I needed a bit of light reading and this fit the bill. I found there to be an excellent balance of Jennifer Crusie's (contemporary-chick-lit-romance) and Bob Mayer's (military/science fiction thrillers) writing styles, neither of whom are authors I would read separately, but together I find them delightful.

It is interesting to hear the narrative from both Agnes's (Crusie) and Shane's (Mayer) point of view, sometimes overlapping chronologically and sometimes moving us ahead, but never in a confusing manner, as so often can occur with overlapping chronology. The writing styles are smooth and blended into each other such as to be indistinguishable to me, though perhaps if I was more familiar with their separate bibliographies, I would not find that to be true. There are some excellent plot twists as well as some downright laugh-out-loud moments. Though slightly far fetched in storyline, this is easy to overlook when given so much to sink one's teeth into.

I intend to go back and add their first collaboration, Don't Look Down, to my collection as another fast-paced, entertaining read.

Overall 4.9/5.0