Crazy Hot

Wow, the prologue sets the tone for the whole series by introducing the characters and man o' man I can't wait to read about these boys!
I love how Regan reacts in certain situations, like a normal person would. When Kid says "take someone out" it keeps tripping her up. Regan doesn't scream hysterically or anything when she has to deal with gun toting men or suddenly turn into Laura Croft either, her mind just keeps stumbling over itself thinking "oh he has a gun" then "Oh shit he really has a gun".
There were tons of great one liners in this book. Tara Janzen knows how to write humor into her books really well.
I did however, find myself checking twice to make sure this was the first book in the series because I kept feeling like I was show more missing some of the story. There was a lot of back story which probably could have been made into a whole other book.
I have always been a muscle car lady and oh man the Camaro scene (pause as I wipe the sweat off my forehead) with the no backseat no problem scene; they use the hood with the car rumbling under them. I tip my hat to you Ms. Janzen for this, yes, yes I do. Greatest scene I have read in '09 hands down.
At first I was kind of distracted by the Kid and Nikki (Regan's sis) romance, but then the conversation they have about her parents was a great downshift from one-liners, sex, and action. I could feel the connection they were building between themselves. (I cheated and looked to see if they were the next book but they're not until book4!! WTF!? I really want to cheat to see these two get together)
Quinn Younger definitely moved into my category of favorite lead characters with his from the school of hard knocks, fighter pilot, to covert ops. He is a great "reformed" bad boy.
This book was pure fun. Janzen writes the scenes so well I could visualize scenes like I was watching a movie and was completely lost in them. Think of this book as a Jean Claude Van Damme movie, you get beef cake, action, and completely unbelievable scenarios, but it won't be winning any Oscars. It will never be deemed a classic but damn if it wasn't entertaining.

A show less

���By far what I liked most about this book was the author's voice. She has a remarkable writing style. Her prose is vivid without being overdone, lush without being repetitive, captivating without being over-the-top. Her dialogue is spot on, too, and she writes men beautifully.

I felt the story lost steam about half-way through, though there were plenty of sexual acrobatics so I guess there was that kind of steam. But the meat of the plot took a backseat to all the sexual escapades, and I started to get a little antsy for a resolution.

The book was probably about a hundred pages longer than it needed to be, and I nearly abandoned it with a hundred pages to go. I'm glad I stuck it out, though, because I liked the ending. It was show more sweet and made sense in a romantic way -- though again, the suspense suffered from a pat, all too neat and tidy ending. I think I will look for the next book in the series, though. I'm curious to see where the author takes the Steele Street boys. (A-) show less

This was fast-paced, a teeny bit over-the-top, but OH MY GOD was this sexy. Regan just wants to find her forgetful grandfather, but when she follows a vague note written in her grandfather's calendar, she ends up in the arms of a man she never thought she'd see again - Quinn Younger, street thug turned American Hero. Regan hasn't seen Quinn since the summer she was 15 and then 16-year-old Quinn walked in on her undressing, but she's fantasized about him ever since.

Unbeknown to her, Quinn's fantasized about her plenty as well over the years, and her unexpected appearance in the middle of a sensitive government op gives him a reason to take her into his custody and convince her to give him the chance he was too intimidated to ask for the show more first time around.

Holy cow were the sex scenes hot. Whew! show less

Okay, so this is the worst book I’ve ever given four stars to. But I had so much fun reading it, three didn’t seem like quite enough. It’s marketed as romantic suspense, but it’s the kind to have with a fruity drink on the beach, not the kind to make you think and make you care. If your idea of great romantic suspense is about authors like Cindy Gerard, Pamela Clare, Suzanne Brockmann, Christy Reece (as is mine), then...well...this is the complete opposite.

This series is Pimp My Ride meets 24. It’s all about car chases and crazy villains and improbable government agencies and sex on the bonnet. In less than a day the hero and heroine have evaded the bad guys a hundred times over, had sex four times, stopped a huge sale of show more weapons, realised they want to get married... On top of that the heroine’s sister has also fallen in love and been on a car chase of her own, while a hundred other things have happened to a hundred other characters.

“It worried him. Like him, she had to be exhausted. She smelled like gasoline; her clothes were torn. She had a small white bandage on her forehead where the EMT had cleaned her cut. Dirt smudged her face, her arms, her legs. He knew she still didn't have any underwear, and for the first time, he felt bad about it. Real bad. He wanted to protect her, make her feel secure, keep her from harm—and all he'd done was lose her underwear and practically get her blown up.”

It’s absolutely crazy, and so much fun. However in this first book of the series I can already see signs of things I’m certain are going to drive me crazy a couple of books in. There’re only so many times they can evade the bad guys by hitting some magic button and sending their muscle car speeding off into the sunset. There should definitely be a limit on how many times one of the men can use the exclamation, “Geezus”. The women display a few borderline TSTL tendencies. The short time frame really doesn’t need to be quite so short.

The men of this top secret security/military/bodyguard/investigative agency (all future leading men, of course - who all get page time here) masquerade as car salesmen in Denver, while saving America and thus the world when nobody’s noticing. Quinn is a national hero, thanks to an incident that happened when he was in the Air Force. Regan is the woman he's loved since they were teenagers, but she married a much older man and Quinn had to admit defeat.

“An eye for an eye,” he said.
“What?” She turned and stared at him.
“An eye for an eye,” he repeated, reaching for the ignition. “He stole something from me, so I stole something from him.”

“Hanson got to sleep with you, and I didn't,” he said, his own jaw a little tight. “So I stole his car.” It was as blunt a confession as he'd ever made to anyone, and there wasn't a damn thing about making it that made him happy.

In fact Regan wanted Quinn too, but neither knew about the other’s feelings - or even spoke to each other - so they wasted all those years. Then one day - while Quinn is in hiding - a divorced Regan turns up in the middle of nowhere in search of Quinn. She needs help finding her grandfather. Both she and her grandfather are palaeontologists, and somewhere along the way the story starts involving a shipment of dinosaur bones which - somewhere along the way - have something to do with illegal weapons trading.

This series revolves around the cars. It really does. So be prepared for that. Whenever they have to escape the bad guys, be certain to anticipate one of the guys hitting some magic button and sending their souped-up car soaring. If there’s sex, it’s probably going to be near or on a car. The cars have women’s names. It’s gimmicky, it worked for me in this book, however I can see how the novelty might disappear after a few books.

There were two things I really didn’t like. The first one was the heroine who’s told by highly-trained military types to STAY PUT, but who of course knows better and nearly gets people killed trying to save the day.
The other is the ‘quirky younger sister with the short, spiky, multicoloured hair and the artistic tendencies’. It has been done to death - and is done again here. When you’re being chased by guys with guns you DO NOT waste time searching for your cherry lip gloss - it’s not cute, it’s stupid.

Another problem I had with this was that it was such a First Book. It’s hard to set up a series, and many authors make the mistake of trying to include too many characters and side stories into their first book. Crazy Hot sure suffered from that. Most of it was interesting, but the whole series was being plotted out through the pages of just one book. I don’t want it all at once!

Sex does not absolutely need to be in books, but there are some authors who can make it an essential part of the story. Tara Janzen writes excellent sex scenes that tell you enough without being too graphic. However, I cannot understand why characters in a secondary storyline (Nikki - the heroine’s sister, and Kid - the hero’s younger workmate) got a much longer and more detailed sex scene than the main couple. It was strange.

Another cliché that needs to be done away with is making the villain a blue-eyed blonde. I’m guessing the authors are always going for that, ‘shock, horror, the villain looks innocent!’ thing, but when every single author is pulling the same ‘surprise’, it becomes groan-worthy. It’s as original as it was to have an evil Soviet guy as the villain back in the 1980s.

This is action-packed, has an enjoyable relationship, but is flashy and fluffy. Cars everywhere and guns and lots of men running around saving the day. It’s fun, but it’s no masterpiece. show less

If done right, I'm a pretty huge fan of shoot-em-up movies where the plot gets a little lost amidst the explosions, shoot outs, and car chases. And apparently I'm a pretty big fan of books that do this too, because I really enjoyed this book.

This is an extremely fast paced action romance. 95% of the story takes place within the space of, I believe, a day. Back in the day Quinn Younger was a budding 16 year old car thief, but after being caught he and a group of other guys were sent to paleontologist Wilson McKinney in Rabbit Valley to work off their time. During this time Quinn became rather smitten with Wilson's granddaughter, Regan, but never got up the nerve up to talk to her. Now after some odd amount of years, Regan has tracked show more Quinn down to the middle of no-where Utah because his name and address was the last thing she found in her missing grandfather's planner. But Regan has been unknowingly followed by some evil henchmen to Quinn. This, of course, sets off a chain of gun fights and car chases.

The main plot of this story, while present throughout the whole book, faded a bit amidst all the action going on. And the reveal of why the baddies were wanting the dinosaur bones was rather... unsurprising. But that didn't effect my enjoyment of the story at all, because Janzen writes some pretty kick ass action scenes. show less

This is billed as romantic suspense, but it’s pretty light on the suspense part. I would view it more as a romantic adventure. We have a nice mix of handsome, bad-boy, secret agent military men; beautiful, quirky, damsels-in-distress; and lovely, powerful cars. As expected, sparks will fly. Having some dinosaur fossils thrown into the mix was an unusual twist that I appreciated. All of the characters are essentially one-note, and sometimes contradictory. For instance, buttoned-up and proper Regan has no problem with several exhibitionist trysts, and doesn’t even have any regrets about it. But, when the rubber hits the road, the reason we pick up these books isn’t plot or character depth. We read books like this for the fantasy, show more and in this, the book succeeds. It’s a nice quick read, and I’ll surely read more in the series. show less

This is the first book in the Special Defense Force (SDF - a secret special ops group) series and a bunch of characters are introduced via a letter in the first chapter. I had to keep paging back and forth to this letter to try to figure out who was who. And the action picks up speed immediately causing me some confusion. But I quickly figured out the characters and plot and it turned into a fun ride. Regan is a palentologist who is searching for her missing grandfather. She drives to Cisco, Utah, looking for Quinn Younger who she is hoping can help her locate him. Regan and Quinn have a past history. They met when they were teenagers and Quinn developed a crush and infatuation for Regan since he accidentally catches her dressing and show more saw her almost naked. I loved these two characters and the secondary characters as well. And the sex was HOT, loved it. I also liked how the restored turbo charged cars had girl's names and were an integral part of the plot. My car-crazy husband would like this one (if I could get him to actually read a book). Between the hot setting (temperature-wise) and hot sex, this one will warm you up on a cold winter night. (Grade: B) show less