Friday Book Report: Gotcha! by Christie Craig

Christie Craig’s novel, Gotcha! is a quirky and fun loving romance with a dash of mystery and suspense mixed in.  Published in 2009 by the Dorchester Publishing Company, this is an enjoyable, lighthearted read.

Macy Tucker is tired of the men in her life letting her down.  At five years old, her beloved grandfather died in his plate of spaghetti and never took her to the circus.  At twelve, her alcoholic and oftentimes abusive father abandoned his family.   At twenty-five, she found her husband rolling around in her bed with his secretary, and quickly thereafter she gave him the boot.  And now, her troubled brother has just escaped prison to apparently protect her and his new girlfriend.  For her, men have been unreliable and overall disappointing.

Men are not on Macy’s to-do list.  She’s focused on getting her law degree and supporting herself with her part-time pizza delivery job.  But all her well-laid plans go awry when she starts receiving death threats from one of the other prison escapees and in walks detective Jake Baldwin.  Her mind is telling her to stay away from the hunky cop, but her body has other ideas. 

Jake Baldwin is a man’s man.  He’s proud, and sexy, and he knows it.  A broken heart in the past has made him cautious when it comes to women.  But when he runs into Macy (literally), she knocks him on the floor (literally).  There’s something about Macy that makes him want to put his heart out there again, and he’s going to do everything he can to prove she can trust him, even if he has to embarrass himself in the process.

This is your typical contemporary romance novel.  It’s fun and lighthearted, and it seldom takes itself seriously.  Oh, there’s a murderer on the loose and a little bit of suspense to balance out the romance, but this is overall a love story.  I enjoyed this book, it’s not one of Craig’s best, but it’s still pretty entertaining.  Macy and Jake are cute together, she’s stubborn and he’s bossy.  She’s a vegetarian and he can’t believe she doesn’t eat bacon.  She doesn’t trust men, and he’s a man.  They are polar opposites, and yet they fit together.  It was  entertaining to watch their relationship progress and see how they worked around everything that was going on. 

My one complaint is that there were too many side stories in this book and it detracted from the story of Jake and Macy.  The secondary stories were cute but weren’t really essential to the plot of the book, and therefore I felt too much attention was placed on them.  We didn’t really need to read about Macy’s mother and her attempts to get over the destruction her abandoned husband did.  It was a compelling story, but not crucial to this story.  Billy (Macy’s brother) and his girlfriend Ellie had a cute story about redemption, but again it wasn’t necessary to go to such lengths to develop their story.  While the side stories were cute, to me they weakened the main plot and robbed the reader of learning more about Macy and Jake.  This story is about those two, and the secondary plots deterred from their story.  Of all the secondary characters, we didn’t even get to learn more about the villain, and all we saw of him were brief glimpses and parting shots.  I thought less focus on Billy and Ellie and Faye (Macy’s mom) and more attention on Macy and Jake and the villain would have made this story better.  The book flipped back and forth between characters and at times it felt jumbled and randomly thrown together.  Craig tried to pull in too many characters’ point of view and in doing so the book loses emphasis in certain sections.  I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I think the book could have been better if the secondary characters stayed secondary and Craig just put her attention on the main roles. 

I give Gotcha! a B grade.  It’s still a cute and fun story, and Macy and Jake make this story what it is.  They are great characters and you really feel yourself pulling for them.  Too many times the minor characters became too major and it pulled away from the real plot.  Craig is a great writer, and she writes with a lot of humor and spunk and it shows in several spots.  This is a romance novel and there are the obligatory love scenes, so beware if that’s not your thing.  While they aren’t overly descriptive, they are still there and readers who aren’t in to that should read with caution.  There’s also some coarse language (a bit too much I thought sometimes), and so this is definitely a book more for adults.  It’s a fun book, a quick and easy read and I’d recommend to readers looking for something light and amusing and sweet to read.  Macy and Jake are entertaining to read about and their story is cute and heartwarming, it’s a fun book to pick up on a rainy day when you don’t want to take yourself too seriously.