Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Review - Mr. Fix-it



Title: Mr. Fix-it
Author: Crystal Hubbard
Publishing Date: September 2008
Genre: Contemporary
Rating: B-
Sensuality: Hot

Khela Halliday, a well known romance author, is in a bit of a bind. She has a book convention to attend and needs a date fast. She has secretly been pining for the hot maintenance super in her building. She has known him for three years now and has never had the nerve to move their relationship from the casual hello, to more. Now out of sheer desperation, she asks him to attend the convention with her as her pseudo date, but really he’s just playing the role of eye candy. Only, it turns out Carter shares a similar attraction to Khela.

What I really enjoyed about Mr. Fix-it was that Khela and Carter come across as two very realistic and human individuals. I could believe that Khela and Carter are real people, not just characters in a book. There was a realness to them in their words and actions that was very believable.

However, since they were so human, they did have some flaws. I found Khela hard to relate to. She has the type of personality when she gets uncomfortable with a situation she starts snapping at people and becoming waspish. This got old after a while. Although, it is toned down by the end of the story. Luckily for her, Carter sees right through the façade and it never fazes him. Khela had her humorous points as well. She has a way with words that would have me chuckling every once in a while.

I really liked Carter. I especially loved that he read every single one of Khela’s books in order to get to know her better. He thinks by reading her books he will learn what she wants from a man and then he will know how to win her heart. But since Carter is portrayed so realistically, of course he flubs it up somehow. Carter’s downfall was that whenever he got into a sticky spot in his relationship with Khela he runs for the hills. Thankfully both characters learn from their mistakes.

I found that Mr. Fix-it was lacking in passion, but it was in interesting story with believable characters. It was sweet and funny and it was an overall enjoyable read.

4 comments:

Kristie (J) said...

I've never heard of this one and it sounds interesting. Could you clear something up though? You rate the sensuality as hot yet say it lacks passion. Could you explain a bit more what you mean by that? Thanks. I think a trip to the bookstore might just be in order.

Jill D. said...

Hi Kristie, I can understand your confusion. I actually had a hard time rating the sensuality of this book. I have a general rule of thumb when grading the sensuality of a book. For a book to get a Hot rating, the couple generally has sex more than twice and the sex is usually rather descriptive.

In the case of Mr. Fix-it, there are quite a few sexual encounters between Khela and Carter, but they varied in length and description. So I ended up settling with Hot for a rating.

The reason why I said it lacked passion was that I felt the sexual tension between the characters was not expressed well; at least for me. Some how a passionate connection was missing. I don't know if I am explaining this very well, but I hope this answers your question.

nath said...

I agree with Kristie, this one does sound very interesting!! :) and I've never heard of this author... I guess that's another one to add :)

Kristie (J) said...

Jill: I think I get what you're saying *g*. Like Nath, I think I'll add this one to the TBB pile.