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35 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mixed reactions, March 21, 2010
This review is from: Wild Ride (Hardcover)
I think this is going to be it for me as far as buying JC's books go, and I hate to say that because I've read and enjoyed her romances for years. I wanted to get into this book, because I like the author and paranormal books, but I automatically approach her works as romances, and this one (like Agnes & The Hitman) doesn't work that way. If you can read Wild Ride as a paranormal work rather than a paranormal romance, you may enjoy it. I had to keep fighting against my romance expectations too much to really enjoy the book, and there were a few other issues.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
Mab felt recycled to me because she felt too much like two different female leads that JC had used in earlier works (Cinderella Deal and Faking It, if memory serves me correctly), and had written best in Faking It. If I had met her fresh, I'm still not sure that I would have liked the Mab version of that character type. I much preferred the male lead, Ethan; I kept thinking how much stronger the book would have been (at least to me) if the main characters had been Ethan and Weaver, instead of dividing the storyline up with Mab's half of the tale.
I didn't like the way that Mab spent most of the book sleeping with a guy that you knew was a red herring, while her real romantic partner had barely there scenes. I didn't like the cliche secret siblings plot twist or the equally cliche got knocked up twist. The knocked up thing felt particularly last minute tossed in. Two cliches in one book seemed a bit much. Cliche twists can work well if the writer does something interesting or takes it somewhere different, but this didn't go anywhere unexpected. It was very Rosemary's Baby meets Star Wars.
Mab, "Joe", and her romantic lead (can't even remember what the guy's name was), felt flat and dull, while the secondary characters like Weaver, Cindy, and the inquisitors felt real. I think I would have gotten in Mab's real romantic lead if I'd gotten to know him better and he had more scene time. I'd love to see more of Ethan and Weaver, Cindy and her dragons, but Mab and the demon spawn...meh. The main demons weren't nearly as interesting as the minion demons. I liked the amusement parking setting; it had a lot of promise.
If you enjoy paranormal works, and couldn't care less about romance, you might this one. If you loved JC's romances and want more of the same, this isn't the book for you. If you love JC's writing and don't care what she writes about, you would probably like this book.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Is Jennifer Crusie done?, April 11, 2010
This review is from: Wild Ride (Hardcover)
I have often noticed that authors don't - can't, I suppose - have an inexhaustible supply of fresh and engaging books in them. It seems as if every writer I've ever loved has run out of steam at some point - stopped writing or started recycling well-worn formulas. I don't even have one book in me, so I'm not, in a sense, in a position to carp, but it's hard to lose something you care about, and it looks to me as if we're losing Jennifer Crusie.
If you just picked Wild Ride off the shelf - a book by a new author, for whom you have no expectations - it wouldn't be a bad read, maybe 4 stars. It's an unusual plot (although I don't like woo-woo stuff), fast-paced, with a lot of oddball characters. If you paid $5 for it at an airport, you'd be entertained reading it on the plane and happy to toss it afterwards.
If, on the other hand, you were looking for Jennifer Crusie, who wrote character-driven books with funny and intelligent leads and interesting relationships that you cared about, then this book would be 2 stars at best. I don't think we can blame her collaborations any longer, because Wild Ride has a lot in common with The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes and Dogs and Goddesses, and Crusie's the common denominator here. This is a plot-driven, good-humans-with-super-powers-against-evil-supernatural-forces book; clearly this is what interests Crusie now. Most of the characters are paper-thin (except Ethan - liked him a lot, but he's not typical of Crusie; is he Mayer's character?), and their relationships with each other are largely irrelevant. While the book's light-hearted, I wouldn't exactly call it funny, and I can't imagine wanting to read it again (once you know the plot twists, you're pretty much done). Is it worth the $17 you pay to buy an author you love in hardcover? No way.
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29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed, March 25, 2010
I am a big Jennifer Crusie fan from way back. I've been reading her since the beginning, before she began this collaboration, and this is the first time I've been disappointed. I've enjoyed her romances and the comedy aspects a great deal, but this was neither. I downloaded this to my kindle and only 31% of the way through it I quit. I had to force myself to keep reading even that much of it. And at 'hardcover' type prices (vs. a 99-cent download), it took alot for me to quit reading. I am an avid reader, and never stop reading a book. I have only ever done that once before in my entire life, shut a book's cover and walked away. This I just wasn't interested in finishing. Too weird for me. If you're looking for a 'typical' Jennifer Crusie/Bob Mayer novel, or for romance or what I think of as her usual light-hearted story-telling, this is not it. I should have read the description and these reviews more closely!
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