Liviania’s review of Hero at Large by Janet Evanovich
Contemporary romance released by Harper 30 Mar 2010
I love Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. Her other books have been more hit and miss for me, especially HarperCollins’s reprints of her old categories. For the most part, Hero at Large is funny and entertaining. In my opinion, it goes a bit off the rails at the end.
Ice-skating coach and single mom Chris Nelson is a little strapped for cash. It’s pretty unsurprising that her beater breaks down by the side of the road. Ken Callahan stops to help and ends up with a broken arm for his trouble, when Chris accidentally drops the hood on him. Through a series of events that would only occur in a screwball comedy, Ken ends up boarding at Chris’s house until his arm heals and he can return to work.
The two have an instant physical attraction, but the sparks really fly while they get to know each other. Chris teaches Ken about competitive ice-skating. Ken tries to cook edible food and bonds with Chris’s daughter Lucy. They joke around with each other. I love the scene where Ken reads one of Chris’s romances.
“That’s some book. I always thought romances were for delicate, frail lady types. Do you know there are pages and pages of sex in that book?”
. . .
“You read the whole book.”
. . .
“Well, hell,” he grinned good-naturedly, “the truth is . . . I enjoyed it.” His eyes raked across her nightshirt. They crinkled into laugh lines and his teeth flashed white in a dazzling smile of laughter turned inward. “You can’t imagine how frustrating it was.”
Then Chris figures out what the reader figured out far earlier: Ken isn’t a freelance carpenter. He’s rich and successful. This drives Chris away since he isn’t the man she got to know. I could understand a little bit of anger, but it felt like too much too me. Perhaps I’m projecting, but I’d be happy to learn that the man I loved was insanely rich rather than struggling for employment.
While the heroine frustrated me some, I still laughed quite a bit while reading Hero at Large. Ken and Chris are both amiable, likable characters. Chris’s pushy Aunt Edna is a clear (and more clear-headed) predecessor of Stephanie Plum’s grandma Mazur. I’m not sure whether I’ll read Hero at Large again, but it did serve its purpose as light entertainment.
Grade: B-
Summary:
He cooks a pot holder in the spaghetti sauce and needs lessons on making Jell-O. Still, single mom and ice skating coach Chris Nelson is committed to keeping her sexy, scruffy, new “house husband” around. After all, she did break his arm…and his toe…and she can’t just turn him out into the cold…It seemed like luck when this gorgeous stranger first stopped to help Chris with her car, but suddenly her peaceful life turns topsy-turvy as tender, long-suffering Ken Callahan enlists the sympathies of her 7-year-old daughter and her meddlesome Aunt Edna. And even Chris can’t deny the excitement his magnetic blue-black eyes spark deep within her…But who is he?
Read an excerpt here.
