"Fine," he muttered, telling himself he was doing it for Olivia, for Carly, and even for Lisette. Not because he had any interest in spending time with Special Agent Sonora Vasquez, or getting wrapped up in her strong, slender arms again.

Do you smell that? That is the smell of subversion, burning up the pages of the romance genre! The hero wants to be wrapped up in the heroine's strong arms.

Here's some more:

Ben's mouth made a thin, hard line. "Where is he now?"

"Why? So you can find him and beat him up?" She laughed, shaking her head.

"I feel protective of you, and you think it's funny?"

"No. What's funny is that you assume I need a protector. That tough-guy avenger crap is more about you than me, and it's insulting. You want to make him pay for ruining your good-girl fantasy, for turning me into a real person with a lot of sexual hang-ups."

Wait, what? The heroine just called the hero on his alpha male bullshizz? She just put him in his place, with no coy sexual innuendo, fluttering eyelashes, or tittering laughs?

Too Stupid to Live (TSTL) heroines everywhere just spontaneously combusted!

Sorenson killed me with this book. Just killed me. On one hand, she does so much-- Sonny, the heroine, is tough and smart, and never looses her skills. She can beat up guys bigger than her in the beginning of the book, before our hero Ben Fortune shows up, and she can do it again later, after Ben is in the picture. In fact, she can even kick the crap out of Ben himself. She is always intelligent, even when she is lusting for Ben or struggling with her own dark past. When push comes to shove, she STAYS as smart as she is written to be, and it never once deterred from the romance.

And Ben-- oh, Ben. He's no beta to Sonny's alpha; physically strong, and deceptively intelligent, he's skilled but not in your typical romance-novel ways. He never magically develops the ability to win every fistfight he enters, neither is he able to beat Sonny at the things she is supposed to be skilled at. Sorenson allows Ben to be realistic and still heroic!

Honestly, there were times I guffawed while reading this book. Not because it was so astoundingly unbelievable. The exact opposite! Sonny, who has never had kids, been married, or been in a serious relationship, does not meet Ben's troubled teenage daughter and suddenly become her best friend/mother figure. In fact, she keeps her distance! Because she has a crime to solve! Exclamation! A woman in a romance novel who is not automatically World's Best Mom?! Guffaw!

And yet... Here's the part that really hurts. While Sorenson hits these incredible high notes with characterization, the plot is not quite there.

A romantic suspense novel has to work on two levels-- the character-driven romance, and the suspenseful action, but the mystery and thrills were not quite there for me. Also, some of her writing choices were a little baffling-- POV-hopping into secondary or tertiary characters like Sonny's mom. You never see her again, she's not really integral to the plot, so why break the rhythm of the novel to introduce and then dismiss her?

I almost wish whoever edited Sorenson was a little tougher on the book. Take out some of those adjectives and adverbs, tighten up the prose so that the plot is focused, and most of all, let the characters lead. Sonny and Ben could have told this story perfectly, if Sorenson had stepped back a little and let them.

Four stars for incredible characters, great dialog, and great romance.

( )

I had a rough beginning with CRASH INTO ME. The formatting for the Google Books file was a bit off, making for seamless transitions where I believe paragraph breaks were in order. Above and beyond the formatting, however, I also had difficulty warming up to the characters. Carly is *such* a brat with Tourettes, but as much as I disliked her, even I thought her suicide-by-rip-tide attempt deserved a lot more attention than it received. Eventually the character blips smoothed out, however, and the sex scenes were well written enough to make up for a multitude of sins. Don't think I'll ever re-read this one, but I'll certainly pick up another Jill Sorenson in the future. ( )

This was a great book! The heroine is tough and no nonsense, and the hero is her match in just about every way. Great story too, I had no idea who the bad guy was until the end! Definitley worth being sleep deprived (because I stayed up all night reading) to have read this book. ( )

I've never come across a hero/heroine quite like Ben or Summer/Sonny or a cast of secondary characters like these ones before.

Ben was such a combination of wounded soul, arrogance, lost, full of himself and so very....loveable and odd. He's champion surfer who made a name for himself in his younger days. To say he was a wild party animal would be putting it mildly. But when tragedy struck, he made a 180, but still kept enough of the wild guy about him to make him utterly fascinating and compelling. He admits he was a Class A Asshole and from the glimpses we get, the reader has to agree with him - he was!! But now he's a single dad, struggling mightily with a troubled, smart mouthed daughter who you want to slap and hug at the same time, a recovering alcoholic, and *laughing* a vegatarian and a total studd muffin.

Summer/Sunny is an equally fascinating character. She's someone loaded with issues - issues we don't get to see until much further along in the book. She's constantly leading poor Ben on, then almost beating him up when he goes too far. It's funny and touching and sad all at the same time. She is an F.B.I. agent looking for a serial killer and Ben is a suspect. Because of her incredible attraction to him, she's constantly doing things, as an agent, she shouldn't be doing, knowing that she shouldn't, but unable to stop. And we, the reader don't blame her. Written by a less skilled writer, some of the things she says or does, we would be thinking 'wait a minute here', but with this writer, it makes sense - at least to me.

This one is a mighty fine example of the genre and it gets two thumbs up from me! ( )