After reading the tastes great and is less filling Evanovich book Plum Lovin’, I was still hungry for some Evanovich so I pulled out Metro Girl out of my to be read pile. I had been putting off reading this because I hate being disappointed when an author carries her existing series into a new character. Sometimes they are too formulaic and just a recycle of the existing character.
Alexandra Barnaby aka Barney, is the older sister of “Wild” Bill. She is a Baltimore native and grew up cutting her teeth on engines at her father’s garage. Bill is a NASCAR driver and has a lifelong penchant for getting into trouble and having his sister bail him out. This time he seems to have gotten himself involved in something very heavy in Miami. Barney heads to Miami to find him.
She immediately runs into Bill’s acquaintance and NASCAR driver Sam Hooker, whom is also looking for Bill for it seems that Bill has fled the area with Hooker’s boat. Hooker is set on fishing on his rare two weeks off and plans on sticking like glue to Barney until he finds his boat.
Filled with fun and slapstick comedy, I did enjoy this book. Barney has similarities to Stephanie Plum as she has no clue on how to find her brother and manages to stumble into each situation with a total lack of finesse. By pure dumb luck she is able to win the day. Hooker is pure testosterone and never fails to drop innuendos that he is interested in getting between the sheets with Barney. There are enough differences that I was not disappointed. I rather enjoyed this quick reading contemporary.
I grade it as a B+. It could have been an A but I may be the only person on the planet who has no interest in NASCAR and didn’t find the fact that Hooker was a driver all that dreamy.
I don’t like the cover; the metallic purple, orange and yellow combination just screams and burns my eyes. They couldn’t have done worse by peppering the cover with advertising like a NASCAR car.
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Have you read the second book in this series (Motor Mouth)? It reminded me even more strongly of her Stephanie Plum books.
It’s a pretty good series – not as good as Plum, IMO though.
I have Motor Mouth sitting on my dresser waiting for me to finish a few review books that I have had forever. Not sure if it is a good thing if it is too close to a Plum story. Hopefully I can get to it next week.
[...] love that in a book. The second Barnaby novel in my opinion was better than the first, Metro Girl. We got to witness the return of Sam Hooker with a new St. Be [...]
[...] second Barnaby novel in my opinion was better than the first, Metro Girl. We got to witness the return of Sam Hooker with a new St. Bernard buddy (Beans), along with Rosa [...]