Hot Mama Review

Hot Mama (Bigtime Superheroes #2) 

-          Jennifer Estep

Kindle Books

She can melt steel – and men's hearts ... 
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 superstrong superhero who can create and manipulate fire with her bare hands. Fiera, along with the other members of the heroic Fearless Five, make life miserable for the ubervillains who want to take over the city. 
But Fiona's personal life isn't so fine. She still misses her fiancé, who was killed by ubervillains a year ago. But 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...

Fiona Fine is the leading fashion designer in Bigtime with a hugely successful business, beautiful apartment and a short temper. She also moonlights as Fiera one of the Fearless Five, a team of superheroes helping to keep the city safe from Uber-villains with schemes of conquest and destruction. Still recovering from the death of her fiancée the year previously she decides it’s time to move on with a fling with the newly returned to the city and devilishly handsome Johnny Bulluci. However, Johnny has secrets of his own…

Hot Mama is one of those rare books which is plain fun without taking itself too seriously. The world of Bigtime has superheroes with superpowers and secret identities, massive battles that destroy buildings across the city and uber-villains who fail to kill the good guys quickly despite the heroes perchance for escaping regularly. This means you recognise the world pretty quickly and even make some simple deductions regarding heroes and villains alter-ego a long time ahead of Fiona...something which can be a little annoying but is in keeping with the world. I liked Fiona – she’s not an easy person to get to know and is pretty opinionated, but she doesn’t have any shades of grey – she works for the good guys, she misses her fiancée and she can eat whatever she wants as she literally does burn calories off with her superpower over fire. A lot of the book is description of the amount and frequency with which Fiona has to eat so this is not a book to read if you are on a diet! J

The romance between Fiona and Johnny is steamy and fun. They are physical attracted to each other from the start, and manage to build upon that foundation as they get to know each other and work together. I felt there was some slight repetition with Fiona or one of her friends saying that her fiancée Travis would have wanted her to move on and be happy. Ok, we get it – she’s been in love before! But I liked the differences between their characters and the idea that Johnny’s secret although easy for us to guess, does create some friction in their relationship they have to resolve. While the relationship was nice, I have to confess I most enjoyed the action and superhero high-jinks. Jennifer Estep has a real flair for excitement and the fight scenes are never less than entertaining – especially with the heroes and villains falling into typical roles and catchphrases. This adds an extra layer of fun for the reader although it can mean that there are no surprises or twists to the plots  either. Overall, this is exactly what you think it is from the blurb and it delivers an entertaining few hours that will leave a smile on your face.

Recommended for fans of Darynda Jones and Jaye Wells. 8 out of 10.