Customer Reviews

Metro Girl

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(54)
3 star:		(43)
2 star:		(33)
1 star:		(84)

 

 

Alex Barnaby is worried when her brother Bill, who is working in Miami, disappears along with his girlfriend Maria. She finds herself reluctantly joining forces with Hooker, a handsome racing driver, whose boat Bill has stolen. Together they set out to find the missing pair, helped and hindered by a variety of other characters.

This is quite a good story with some amusing moments, but I did not find it nearly as funny or exciting as the Stepahine Plum novels, none of the characters interested me very much, and the heroine, Alex, seemed insipid compared to Stephanie.

If you haven't read any Janet Evanovich books before, my advice would be to skip this one and go for the Plums, they are very much better than this.

Scooby elements: A cache of gold bars! A treasure map! A dastardly, swarthy villain who drives around in a limo with henchmen saying things like, "Very well. It's only a matter of time." Young woman who finds her brother's apartment ransacked, but doesn't call the cops -- she and her friends solve the mystery themselves!

Bad '80s TV drama (Riptide, Remington Steele, A-Team) elements: Soviet weapon at large! Outwitting doofy, incompetent G-men! Car crashes! A secret warehouse where the bad guys load stuff into 18-wheelers! Rappelling in through the roof! Scuba-diving for treasure! An exploding helicopter! Thousands of rounds fired, but people are only superficially wounded!

I'll shut up about the two dozen continuity problems and ludicrous plot cheats (well, in a minute): A Nascar driver and a guy named Wild Bill weigh only 360 pounds together, and can be lifted into a car unconscious, handcuffed together by a skinny blonde woman and a willowy gay guy? An elderly woman is such a good shot with a handgun that she can hit one guy in the foot and one guy in the arm because she just wants to wound them? A fishing boat running the Cuban blockade sinks and is missing for decades, then turns up at the bottom of a HARBOR? Almost made it!

And the characters are totally stock: The hot, tomoboyish young blonde woman in the short skirt, the homosexual, Burberry-wearing, exfoliating, interior designer queen (whom the hero just happens to know from childhood 1,600 miles away), the Texas race-car driver, the bumbling federal agents.

This actual quote from the first-person narrator on page 254 sums up the book: "Good thing I watch a lot of television. If it wasn't for television, I wouldn't have any ideas at all. Sometimes I worried that I didn't have a signle thought in my head that wasn't already a cliche'."

As a die-hard NASCAR fan, I am not overly pleased that Janet "used" my passion to sell a less than mediocre story and make money off of me...shame on you, Janet.

My personal opinion is: This book is nothing other than another quick "put-em-out-and-sell-em" attempt that, unfortunately, seems to be the latest approach for many of our best-selling authors of late (can anyone spell James Patterson?).

The most discouraging thing is that I was sold on the NASCAR-GUY connnection...not impressed at all. I'm sure many others bought into this idea of a NASCAR themed book and it really had absolutely nothing to add to the storyline. Janet could've made her male hero an NFL/NHL/World Soccer League/World Wrestling Federation character and nothing would've changed...sorry, but just not impressed.

I may have giggled once or twice, but there simply was little to no SUBSTANCE and a whole lotta fluff here. Perhaps if I were on a beach in the tropics, I could've written this off as a pleasant summer read...unfortunately, I read this thing during the mid of winter in Northern New York and I was left feeling as cold as the air that seeps through my 30-year-old single-pane windows...

Sorry, Janet, but my money's much better spent on a couple of trackside tickets in Dover and Martinsville where REAL NASCAR stories unfold.

I had high hopes for this new series by JE but they were a bit deflated by the end of the book.

I'm a big fan of her Plum series and while in many ways it was classic JE, I found that I didn't quite come to care about the characters in Metro Girl as I do Steph, Joe, Ranger, Lula and the gang. I felt a distance from Barney and Hooker, and the secondary characters as well. They lacked the presence and spark her Steph Plum characters carry.

Her website advertises this series in comparison to the Steph Plum books as - The sex is sexier, the night's hotter. Huh? There is no sex, the most you're going to get is a little making out and it's very 'high school' at that. The night's hotter? Hmmm, aside from the hot weather there is not a lot of hot going on here.

The sexual tension between Steph, Joe and Ranger far surpasses anything in Metro Girl.

By halfway through I was starting to lose interest in the whole mystery, by 3/4 the way through I found myself skimming ahead to the end just to get it over with.

I'd say this new series is ok for paperback, but I wouldn't spend hardcover $$ on it.

I am sorry to say that I regret spending the money to buy this book in hardcover. I should have waited and checked it out of the library. The Stephanie Plum series is wonderful, and gets better with every book. Based on that, I figured that the writing would be just as good in this "new" series, but sadly that is not true. The plot is so unbelievable that it becomes ridiculous. The characters are very shallow, making it hard to really care what happens to them. Hooker, who refers to himself as "NASCAR Guy", is the lamest of all. It's impossible not to compare this to the Plum series, and Alex and Hooker will never compete with Stephanie, Ranger and Joe.
By the way, the word "NASCAR" is mentioned so many times in this book, you would almost think Ms. Evanovich is getting paid for each time it appears.

The only thing good about this book was that a friend gave it to me for free.

The writing was pre-adolescent stream of consciouness. The characters were one dimensional, the plot was thinner than Kleenex and I have read better humor on a bathroom stall.

Like one of the reviewers before me, I am a big fan of the Plum series and when this book was promoted to be on par with Evanovich's bestselling series I confidently bought it in hard back. I am here to tell you that I am actually taking the book back to the store. There is no guilt - this product is simply not worth the money spent. I refuse to be swindled out of 23 dollars.

If this is a mystery - pieces of the plot work up until the end climax. Can we say - silly? If this is a romance - NASCAR guy is annoying. That joke went on too many times even when he was being sarcastic. He's a lech, looking at women as a bakery of overflowing offerings - and we are suppose to like him? But he's NASCAR guy - everybody wants NASCAR guy. What kind of ego is that? On the other hand, Alexandra just never quite evoked my sympathy either. This "high octane" adventure left the character development at the starting line.

I have happily gone for a ride with Evanovich prior to this book
- why? Because Plum just makes you want to follow her around to see what she'll do next. Alexandra - or Barney - just made me shake my head. She is a cookie cutter image of Plum without the substance, moxie or sense of self (or lack there of). Evanovich wants to also follow her proven formula by bringing other characters - literally - along for the ride. And that extra help just smacks of the various characters that hitch along in her other series. Lula is now Rosa and works in a cigar factory.

This is fluff and it's short. Big print and 296 pages long. Metro Girl feels like it came out of some sort of machine that has forgotten that character, character, character is what brings the readers back for more.

I am feverently hoping that Evanovich hasn't lost her touch.

I'm a HUGE Plum fan and have been waiting anxiously for the release of Metro Girl. Janet Evanovich is the only author who I will spend the extra money for hardback. This book was a huge disappointment. I had to force myself to read it which is so surprising! I was irritated with practically every character in the book. It's like Janet Evanovich tried TOO hard to make the people funny and it flopped. The love interest was the most annoying character that I have ever read (and I read a lot!). I cannot believe that I am giving my favorite author one star but this book read like it was written in 1 day.

I understand that she was trying something different than Plum but at least give us a likable characters and a good story. She bombed on both with Metro Girl.

I asked for this book for Christmas and it was so bad, I had to force myself over the next six weeks to even finish it.

Written for idiots only. The story is totally ridiculous, and steals plots from better books written by other authors and tries to combine them in one book to produce a total stinker. It almost as if the author/editor/publisher is saying "we know you are not smart to read several decent books, so let me combine into all the various plots into one volume - a "Macdonald's book" junk food for the mind, low quality, full of artificial ingredients and bad for your mental health.

Janet Evanovich relies on hackneyed stereotypes and using the same jokes over and over again. NASCAR man. NASCAR man. NASCAR man. Was she being paid by the NASCAR industry for the number of times it appears? Hundreds, no probably thousands of times!!! I have no idea what a NASCAR is, but if I ever see that term again I will vomit, preferably over the author.

Alex "Barney" is so awful, I wanted her to be shot, drown, stabbed or put down as an act of mercy on the reader. NASCAR man needs an entire firing squad to shoot him - on page one. I would stab myself repeatedly in the eye with a pencil before reading anything else by this author.

If you have an IQ in single digits, you might find the book amusing. If you have any intelligence at all, give it a wide berth.

Metro Girl is the worst of the worst Chick Lit.

Janet Evanovich promised her fans a brand new character. What we got was Stephanie Plum as a race car driver/mechanic with blonde hair. Worse: Alex is not nearly half as interesting as Plum, but Janet Evanovich works way too hard to try to make her to be.

The writing is not as natural as the Plum novels. The storyline a bit contrived. And confusing. The love and/or sex story? Nothing like what we have with Stephanie, Joe, and Ranger.

I am severely disappointed in this much-anticipated novel. Instead of handing us Alex Barnaby, Ms. Evanovich's time would've been much better spent expanding on the story she gave us a few years ago with Visions of Sugar Plums. Instead of Alex, she could have followed up on the story she started with Mary Alice. Now THAT was interesting.

Alex... not so much. Sorry, Janet. I really wanted to like this one, but it was an extreme disappointment.