HOT MAMA

Author: Jennifer Estep ISBN: 0425217345 11/2007 CONTEMP/PARANORMAL Publisher: BERKLEY

By day, Fiona Fine is a successful couture designer, catering to the high society players of Bigtime, New York. By night, she's Fiera, a member of the heroic Fearless Five who can create and manipulate fire with her bare hands. Fiona's personal life, though, isn't so hot. She still misses her fiancé, who was killed by ubervillains a year ago. Still, men admire Fiona's smoking assets, and she decides to get back in the dating game—especially after she meets Johnny Bulluci. But this notorious playboy has plenty of secrets to go along with his sexy smile. And, with two new ubervillains in town who are intent on raising hell, Fiona's love life might just crash and burn.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Estep starts HOT MAMA off where KARMA GIRL left off. Karma Girl is marrying her man and Fiera is (reluctantly) attending as a bridesmaid. Everything is going off without a hitch, but smooth sailing doesn't last long in BigTime. At the reception, two new ubervillains crash the wedding and cause havoc as they rob all of the wedding guests. This heist sets the stage for a showdown between the Fantastic Five and the ubervillains in a battle for control of BigTime.

HOT MAMA is the second installment in Estep's innovative series set in a comic book world. This time the book is written from Fiera's point of view, which may or may not be a good thing for readers. I did not enjoy Fiera so much as a character in KARMA GIRL, but by getting inside of her head in HOT MAMA , the reasons she acts the way she does at times, was better explained. The romance between Fiera and her love interest was well-done, though the mystery surrounding the identity of her mystery man was very obvious. Just as in traditional comics, where no one realizes that the only difference between the superhero and his alter-ego is a pair of glasses, the reader knows much more than the characters do. Luckily, that is part of the charm of these books.

Though it would likely be helpful to have read KARMA GIRL before HOT MAMA, if only to avoid spoilers in KARMA GIRL, it's really not necessary as the fight between good and evil needs no explanation. One thing that did detract from my enjoyment of HOT MAMA, was that I found that the middle seemed to drag. Too much time was spent showing Fiera face off with her mystery man, only to go out with him on a whirlwind date the next day, never the wiser. Given that the book is slightly more than 350 pages, I found it pretty easy to skim over these parts in my hurry to get on with it.

All in all, however, HOT MAMA was an enjoyable read, and I'll definitely be putting her next novel, JINX, on my wish list.

Jilian Vallade