I forgot about C. Smith Rydell; liked him when he was Kid's partner in Crazy Kisses. Looks like he is the side story in this book since Janzen can't just concentrate on one couple. I am really liking Mr. Rydell and almost wish this was his story.
Even being a couple chapters in I just didn't get where Janzen is taking this story. I get Gillian wants to kill Royce (CIA agent gone bad) and I get Travis is in love with her. I didn't get the bondage sex scene between Gillian and Travis and as much as I am beginning to like C. Smith Rydell, his and Honey's story didn't blend in.
I find myself getting mad at Gillian and Travis' story interrupting Smith's and Honey's, even though this is suppose to be Gillians and Travis's. Smith and Honey have a great rapport and what feels like some smoking chemistry on the way.
So, I completely didn't get this book. There seemed to be more story about Smith and Honey than Gillian and Travis. I'm not even sure I get the story line of Gillian turning into a "superhuman". I definitely didn't feel connected to Travis and Gillian. To be completely honest if someone were to ask me to describe this book in one word, I would say retardo. Very mature of me yes, I know. Only Smith and Honey saved this book for me, and I am excited to read their story. Janzen has a branch off series from this one called "Steele Street-Loose" which is where we get their story. I think I am going to take a break from this series though and come back to it later. Janzen has disappointed me too much in these later books.

C ( )

Overall Rating: 5 // Action: 5 / Emotion: 5.5 / Romance: 4.5 / Sensuous: 4 / Suspense: 5 // Laughter: 20 / Tears: 5

Avidly reading Tara Janzen's "The Steele Street Series", one book right after the other. Each book has been great. But Book Six, *Crazy Sweet*, was awesome. Once I started reading, I did not want to put it down (for any reason: to feed the dog, to sleep, etc.) This book deserved the big 5.0 rating. It so engaged my emotions that I had to give the emotional aspect of the book a 5.5 out of 5.0.

*Crazy Sweet* was a book of great contrasts. Dark versus Light. Good guy versus Bad guy. Humor versus Seriousness. Sweet versus Cold and Hard.

Giving this book a 5.0 rating was difficult because I hated what Gillian Pentycote had become. I hated her treatment of the love of her life. But that's what made me realize it deserved a high rating. Janzen created such a flawed personality with such depth that she was able to draw strong emotions from the reader -- the whole idea behind writing a book -- to engage the reader -- to draw her in. Janzen succeeded with flying colors!

Janzen did a great job of relieving the path into darkness by interweaving Angel and Red Dog's story with Smith and Honey's budding romance. Smith's humor and lightness was so laugh-inducing. Smith was such a man's man and Honey was so über feminine. Even though Travis and Gillian took top billing in *Crazy Sweet*, Smith and Honey stole the show.

*Crazy Sweet* is a must-read for anyone who enjoys an emotional, action-packed, edge-of-your-seat suspense. It is even a must re-read for anyone who wants to laugh and cry the day away. See Wolf Bear Does Books (http://goo.gl/O4PqC) for a more detailed, in-depth review of *Crazy Sweet*. ( )

When you make your heroine an amnesiac who no longer feels emotions, you’re going to be in a bit of trouble making her interesting! Thank goodness for Tara Janzen’s tendency to make her secondary stories at least as important as the main story, because while Gillian and Travis’ parts warrant somewhere around two stars, Honey and C. Smith’s parts are worthy of a five.

There’s so much I love about Tara Janzen’s quirky writing, and I can overlook many things I’d have issues with if almost anybody else wrote this. The series is my guilty pleasure read – it’s funny and completely over the top, with a bunch of superheroes based in Denver and running around the world saving the day. It’s just that in this one the plot we’re told about in the blurb gets very little page time, and so seemed incomplete.

What I loved best about this book were the scenes between the mysterious C. Smith Rydell and Honey York-Lytton. They’re the hero and heroine of the next book, but they well and truly stole the show in this one. They were also a throwback to what I loved so much about the series at the beginning: quirky characters, great heroes who just so happen to have a thing for quirky heroines, ridiculous situations and a big dose of humour. I loved, loved, loved this couple enough that they compensated for the other ways the book disappointed me.

So what about the supposed main plotline (which gets surprisingly little page time)? Travis has been around in the books since the very beginning. A metrosexual nude art model when we first met him, he’s added ‘gun-toting alpha hero’ to his repertoire in recent times. He has a tendency to fall desperately in love with women who don’t want him – and to fall in the space of five minutes. He met Gillian in the last book, when she was a nerdy divorcée living out of her car, her clothes buttoned unevenly and items of clothing randomly falling off. He saw through all of that to who she was underneath.

No sooner had that happened than she was abducted right out from under him, tortured, and injected with something that made her lose her memories. Now in Crazy Sweet she’s an emotionless, hardened assassin for hire, with decade younger Travis standing by her and still in love with her. The problem with this premise is that Gillian (now known as Red Dog) is completely devoid of humanity, and so made for an unbelievably dull heroine. Which is precisely why I was so relieved to have the enigmatic Honey get so much page time instead.

The problem is that there’s no resolution to Gillian’s storyline. She starts and ends the book with no memories, no real identity, no real emotions, no real way to change any of that. I absolutely adored her character before her transformation (I was desperately looking forward to this book because I loved Gillian and Travis and all their quirks so much), and up until the last page I kept on hoping she’d recover some of who she was before.

Weird, but there was so much detail about the guns in this one – how to clean them, what different models looked like – it was too much information for the average non-gun owner!

I also have an issue with how much page time Christian Hawkins has had in the last few books. He’s had his book, and I’m tired of him saving everyone else in every other story. I’m tired of every bad guy in the world knowing who he is and speaking about him with reverence. Travis should have been the one to save the day here, seeing as how this is his book! I’m even having trouble loving Christian the way I did in the past – I’m not into men who have their wives pregnant three times in two years! I really liked ‘Superman’ in the earlier books, but now he’s stealing the show I just want him to go away and let the other kids have a turn! Quinn is one of my favourite heroes in the series, and he hasn’t made an appearance for years.

Great, fun, wonderful, crazy series. This was the weakest entry, but it didn’t stop me diving straight into the next one. ( )

These 'Crazy' books are so fast paced and hot that I find myself liking them all. This one was not quite as good as some others but still enjoyable. (Grade: B) ( )

Ugh. This one felt like she felt she *had* to write another one. I've liked Travis for several books - he's written as an incredibly nice guy, but in this one he's in love with a woman who has ZERO appeal. She's a HORRIBLE character, her only redeeming quality being that before she lost her memory, she was sweet.

That's it. And Travis, the guy we've been told over and over in previous books is the nicest, calmest, most stable person ever, spends the whole book agonizing about this "incredible" yet psychotic woman he loves.

AWFUL. ( )