My Take in Brief: Enjoyable, but drastic u-turn in last 10% took points off. Also, hero makes a claim about women and “pulling out” that I have never heard in my entire life. Is it true?
Series? Yes, this is the second book in her stock car racing series (Fast Track)
Setting: Present day Charlotte, North Carolina, stock care milieu. Did you know what a stock car looks like? I did not. Here’s one:
(Psst. It’s not real. It’s from one of those funny fake news stories. Maybe you have to be Jewish to pee your pants laughing at this?)
Heroine and Hero: Imogen is a serious, nerdy grad student in sociology, Upper East Side upbringing. Ty is a stock car racer who is dyslexic.
Plot: Two people date and fall in love.
Conflict: For the first 90%, this was the most conflict-free romance I have ever read. Then, bam.
Word on the Web:
Tracy’s Place, 3.5 out of 5
Lurv A La Mode, 3 scoops out of 5
Babbling About Books, A-
Stacy’s Place on Earth, 4.5 out of 5 (link is to blog home. I couldn’t find link to page)
All About Romance, Katie Mack, C+
Breezing Through, Nath C+, Ames B-
Dear Author, Jane, B
Amazon.com 4.5 stars after 9 reviews
RomanceNovelTV, Maria, 4.5 out of 5
Romance Rookie, Jill D, A
Sportpickle manages to review this book without actually reading it, calling it “This Weekend’s Book Not To Read”
Fun factoid: I had never heard of this author prior to Flat Out Sexy, and thought she was a newbie. It turns out she has written 24 single title romances in 7 years.
Racy Romance Review:
I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed at the idea of attempting to say anything new about this book after so many reviews have been written. I enjoyed reading this book, as I did the first one in the series, Flat Out Sexy. Sometimes reading a romance really is like reading a People magazine or watching an action movie. Just passing entertainment. This was a nice, steamy story of two people who seem quite different (the brawn and the brain) falling in lust and then love.
A number of reviewers have mentioned the pacing, and I agree it was all over the place. We have already been introduced to these characters and their flirtation in Flat Out Sexy, and in the first scene of Hard and Fast, they end up kissing in the rain on a porch things proceed pretty quickly from there. Then, things kind of stall. Then get crazy. Like many readers, I appreciated Imogen’s honesty, Ty’s charming personality and their fun (if not, for me, exactly “sparkling” — it is this book’s misfortune that I read the fishing scene in Hard and Fast only a couple of weeks after the incomparable fishing scenes in Jennifer Crusie’s Manhunting) dialogue. They were just a normal couple without any real conflicts. Makes great use of Shakespeare. For the first 9/10′s I really enjoyed it.
But Hard and Fast took a nosedive for me at the end and the HEA turned into a HFN for this reader. After a fairytale whirlwind courtship, Imogen and Ty suddenly wake up and realize they don’t know anything about each other and are very different. That would have been fine if they had had more than a few pages to work this out.
