Hotshot review

Hotshot is the latest romantic suspense novel by Julie Garwood. While I enjoyed the plot of the novel, the characters left something to be desired.

Peyton is all drama. She says one thing but does another time after time. She does not seem very bright and is a little wishywashy. Peyton had to suddenly leave her job as a food critic because her boss is not willing to take no for an answer and he wants to have sex with her. She is threatened and almost killed but does she take her evidence to the police or even to the owner of the company? No. She goes on and on about needing to make the guy pay but she never tries to follow through. It came across as fairly ridiculous to me.

Lucy, Peyton's sister, is completely obnoxious. Sister or not, if she'd treated me the way she did Peyton when they first started at the resort, I'd have broken her nose. The romance between Lucy and Christopher was not believable to me. Unless you are five years old, picking a fight is not the appropriate way to show someone you like them.

Finn as a fairly typical FBI guy, a quintessential alpha protector. He was not very smart with women and didn't seem to be able to understand his own feelings. He was smart, protective, and sometimes funny but he didn't always treat Peyton well which I disliked.

The secondary characters were also not up to Garwood's usual level. They were fairly one-dimensional and stereotypical - the evil developer, the greedy cousin, and the heir-less uncle. They felt flat to me which is disappointing because Garwood usually writes very vivid secondary characters.

Overall, Hotshot was not one of my favorite Garwood books. But when you write as many as she has, there's always going to be one that doesn't work even for your biggest fan!

Synopsis

Peyton Lockhart and her sisters have inherited Bishops Cove, a small, luxurious oceanfront resort, but it comes with a condition: The girls must run the resort for one year and show a profit - only then will they own it.

A graduate of a prestigious French culinary school, Peyton has just lost her job as a food critic. Out of work and in a bad place personally, a year doing something completely different sounds wonderful.

There are countless challenges and too many people who want to stop the sisters from succeeding. Among them are Peytons contentious cousins, who are outraged that they didn't inherit the resort, as well as a powerful group of land developers who have been eyeing the coveted beachfront property.

Its soon apparent to Peyton that their efforts are being sabotaged, but she refuses to let the threats scare her - until she's nearly killed. She calls on her childhood friend and protector, Finn MacBain, now with the FBI, and asks for his help. He saved her life once; he can do it again.