Customer Reviews

Full Tilt

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

will I buy an Evanovich and Hughes collaboration. I love the Stephanie Plum series by Evanovich, but I struggled thru the earlier book, Full House. And I couldn't even make it thru this one. It is AWFUL! I love to read. I read the cereal boxes at breakfast, but I couldn't make myself finish this book. The characters are very one dimensional. The writing is inconsistent (sometimes Max is the cousin and other times, he's the brother-in-law). Where was the editor? Please don't waste your time and/or money.

No, this series is not like Stephanie Plum. This is not for Mystery fans, but more Romance fans. The Characters are well developed, but a bit far fetched, and the plots are a bit unbelievable. Even after all this I don't think it is a bad read. The story moves very quickly and is a page turner, it is not like you are getting bored throughout the book. I still am a fan and we will see as the series grows it may get better, there is a lot of room for that.

Max and Dee Dee are back from Full House, twenty years later. Dee Dee's Husband, Frankie, is running for mayor and is looking for missing tax dollars. His brother-in-law, Max Holt, comes to town to help him out. Max is helping out one of his sister's friends, Jamie Swift, by investing in her news paper. There is an instant connection there!

This was a fun, quick read, and full of adventure!

As an avid reader of Janet Evanovich's stephanie plum series I was ecstatic when I saw that she has now decided to resurrect some old romance novels and revamp then in her now famous style.
When I read the first book in this series (Full House), I thought wow - cool - now I don't have to wait til June for the next stephanie plum. But then, unfortunately, I picked up full tilt. What a let down.

Clearly my opinion is not shared by everyone - in fact one of the reviewers that I usually respect - harriett klausner clearly really enjoyed the book. However, I think if you are a fan of romantic suspense and janet evanovich as well, you will be left unfulfilled by her latest novel. Unlike Full House, in which billie and nick drew you in as characters, I found Max to be generally uninteresting and unlikable - which seems like it would be hard to do with a character who is a genius, rich, and comes from a zany yet troubled past.

In addition to a boring (sorry but he is) male character, there is the relatively forgettable female lead, the head of a truly uninspired newspaper (a potentially interesting subplot which was really never explored). There is also Vera, an obnoxious semi-mother figure who really made me yearn for Grandma Mazur, and God help us all, a talking computerized Car - named Muffin. Please make it stop. To all the authors out there (Catherine Coulter this means you too) please stop with the artificial intelligence in anything from a car to a calculator - it is manufactured, unconvincing, and overall - not funny!

I really felt like full tilt had major potential, including characters and locations that could have been creatively utilized, but the story just did not gel - nothing came together. In fact, I practically had to force myself to slog through this sucker. My recommendation - read full house instead and put your seven fifty in a fund towards To the Nines, coming out in June - at least that is what I wish I had done.

If you feel you must read this book, get thee to a library. Trust me, you don't need to waste your money on this one. As other reviewers have said, Evanovich is a talented writer. I haven't read any of Hughes' other books, but I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, because "Full House," their previous collaboration, was pretty entertaining, if a bit rough around the edges. I bought this book based on that experience, and because I really enjoy the Stephanie Plum series by Evanovich. Add to that the carryover character of Max, whom I found interesting in "Full House," and I thought this book had to be a winner.

After the first hundred pages or so, all I could think was "Wow! This book really, really stinks. How is that possible?" It's not that the writing style or characters are different from Evanovich's Plum books. It's that the writing style and characters are hackneyed and boring. Want an example? Here's the gay personal assistant: "Beenie screamed and almost tripped on his own two feet jumping back. 'Oh, Lordy, you scared me half to death!' he cried. 'My heart is going pitter-patter, pitter-patter. I almost weeweed on myself.'" This book is just painfully bad.

For those of you (like me, unfortunately) who are tempted to read this book even after seeing all the bad reviews here, I have three words: find a library.

Full House had potential, and Max Holt was interesting in that, so I was looking forward to seeing him in Full Tilt. But he was totally different -- what happened to his change the world revolutionary zeal? I thought Muffin (the talking computer) was the best part of the book -- I did hear the audiobook version, which I think added a lot, because you hear her talking in her Marilyn Monroe voice. The wrestlers were just kind of there, not really doing anything funny as in the first book. I thought Beanie was okay, and I liked the relationship between him and Dee-dee, but I was disappointed in Dee-dee, who was so funny in the first book. Anyway, this is not up to Janet Evanovich's usual standards, sadly enough. It makes you appreciate her normal flair.

Like many of the other reviewers, I was disappointed in this book. The heroine, Jamie, is not particularly likeable and was such a shrew to Max most of the time, that I had a hard time understanding his attraction to her. I particularly cringed every time the woman said "double damn" and stamped her foot. Come on... how old is Jamie supposed to be? Also the writing at times was sloppy. Max and Dee Dee's cousin Nick was once referred to as their uncle and then again as "Max". More careful proofreading, please.

That being said, I _did_ enjoy the story. I'll buy the sequel because I think the Jamie/Max duo has promise and the storyline itself held my interest. At the end, I was ready to get in the car and go off with them. I'm just hoping that their next adventure finds Jamie in a better mood.

I'm sorry to say I'm one of the duped readers who put this dreadful little book on the best-seller list. I bought it on Evanovich's name alone, but wouldn't have if I'd had the sense to thumb through even the first two pages in the store. I've read and enjoyed all of Janet's Stephanie Plum series -- I suggest you buy one of those instead. (They're easy to spot, they have a number in the title, i.e., "Seven Up.") I've also enjoyed several of the out-of-print Evanovich romances and her Stephanie Plum Christmas book, although I'm neither a romance or mystery fan. Unlike any of Evanovich's other books, in Full Tilt the characters and plot are unbelievable and unsympathetic, the dialogue is stilted and forced, and Stephanie Plum's wit and intelligence are missing in Jamie Swift. Unfortunately, this means I'll be handling future Evanovich's with tongs -- or at least, a good, long in-store reading session before I plunk down the cash.

Because of the Stephanie Plum novels, and because I couldn't wait for numbers 8 and 9 of that series, I grabbed Full House and Full Tilt at the same time, thinking that I'd be getting the same quality writing.

Wow, was I ever wrong. Full Tilt was a smidgeon better than Full House, but not by much. 20 years have gone by since House, and we get to see Frankie, Dee Dee and Max again. Did Janet Evanovich simply cut and paste the biography for Max, from whats-his-face's in House? Max, the gawky genius teen from Full House is now a grown man who's turned into even more of a cad than his uncle was!

Like Full House, Full Tilt is a poorly written romance with some mystery/thrill thrown in almost as an after-thought. Neither book is up to par with Janet's numbers series - the laughs aren't there, the suspense and mystery are irrelvant, and the sexual tension is almost non-existant! I'm not really sure how you'd categorise these books, but they certainly should not be listed as mysteries as they are in most bookstores.

If you're a Stephanie fan, do NOT buy these books just because you feel some loyalty to the author.

I was sooooo disappointed! I buy the Stephanie Plum books in hardback so I know that Janet is usually good for the investment, but this book was BAD. The writing was so poor, it made me cringe. Didn't anyone edit it? The plot was weak and unoriginal, but I could never seem to get past the junior-high level poor grammar and cliche-ridden writing style. I rarely find it hard to finish a book--I'll slog through almost anything--but I skipped a large portion of this one to read the ending. The first book in the series was an acceptable early Evanovich. My advice to the publisher is to kill the rest of the series now.

I'm actually amazed by the number of people who've given this book 4 or 5 stars. I can only assume that if you did, you didn't read the book, or you're trying to get on Janet Evanovich's good side, because this book was one of the worst I've ever read. Sad, because it should have been really cool. The idea of a "Knight Rider"-ish smart car was a good one. But, there's one problem. A cool car like that is only good IF YOU USE IT IN AN EMERGENCY!!

Without giving too much away, the main characters, Max and Jamie, (two of the most boring characters to grace the pages of a novel) while investigating a crime find themselves stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Ok, first of all...this guy's a super-genius millionaire businessman and the woman owns a newspaper but neither one of them has a CELL PHONE!!?? Then, this guy owns the worlds coolest talking car and he doesn't think to tell it, "Hey, if we're not back in a couple of hours, call someone"??? Hello!? What the hell is the car there for?? Am I the only one that can see how lame that is? Now, the saving grace for all of this would have been if the super genius had planned the whole thing so that he could get a little sex. At least that would have explained the lack of a cell phone or the lack of brains enough to have a back up plan. But, no...and as a matter of fact, when he DID try something with the woman, she starts talking about commitment!

I suspect that the lack of sex was so that the sexual tension could build up over time and throughout a series of books. One problem though: There has to BE sexual tension first! There was none between these two! One night of groping out in the middle of nowhere does not sexual tension make.

I'm shocked...honestly...that the publisher would publish this the way it is. Obviously, the publisher thought, "Oh, it's Evanovich, it'll sell." Yeah, maybe it will, but it's sequals won't. At least not to me.