Hot

The title: Hot
The author: Julia Harper (aka Elizabeth Hoyt)
Publication: Hachette, 2008
Got it from: Barnes and Noble, Buffalo, April 2015

Quick review: the cover and title of this book are stupid.  They tell you nothing about the real content of the book and imply it's some sort of chick-lit summer romance.  It's actually a reissue of a contemporary of one of my favourite authors, Elizabeth Hoyt. Now that she's made it big in the historical realm I guess they want to cash in.  It worked - I definitely picked it up because the author's name is in big letters and because it's about a librarian who's being chased by an FBI agent.  Except the fact that she's a librarian doesn't really have much to do with the story.  The heroine is Turner Hastings and she's out to clear her deceased uncle's name, and she's willing to sacrifice anything to do so - even taking advantage of a bank robbery to do a little heist on her own.  Turner and the hero, John MacKinnon, play cat and mouse and don't actually meet until over 200 pages in - their relationship develops via cell phone as she's being chased.  For the most part this book was entertaining but it often teetered on the edge of "annoying quirky cutesy"* (Would a 31-year-old really eat nothing but pickled herring?  Really?) You can definitely tell it's by an early Elizabeth Hoyt who was just finding her voice.  Even though it's no Maiden Lane series, I want to read the sequel, so that tells you something.

Rating: 3.5 pickled herrings out of 5.

*See authors I dislike for this trope: Phillips, Susan Elizabeth.  Cruisie, Jennifer.