Gail Koger, $2.99, ISBN 978-0463426074
Paranormal Romantic Suspense, 2018

I have to hand it to Gail Koger: she knows how to reel me into Shenanigans from page one.

My name is Kandi Cain. How did I get stuck with this swell name? My mom, Margaret, is obsessed with Christmas. She even dresses as an elf in July. She had her ears surgically altered to be more elf-like. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Hmm. I feel the cringe bubbling in me…

My father, Nick Cain, is a very large Santa look-a-like. He was a mob enforcer for the Gambino family until he met my mother at a Christmas party. It was love at first sight. To keep her safe, my Dad quit his job and they quietly moved from New York to Apache Junction, Arizona. Apache Junction is a small tourist town located at the base of the Superstition Mountains. The town caters to people interested in visiting the numerous ghost towns and hunting for the Lost Dutchman’s gold mine.

Okay, I’m sitting down again to keep reading. See? The author can be sneaky.

I was two when my parents found me in the backyard surrounded by birds, skunks, coyotes, jackrabbits, dogs, cats and a big ass mountain lion. I was giggling happily and petting them. My Dad said he almost crapped himself.

Mom wasn’t pleased I had inherited her mother’s psychic talents. She wanted me to have a “normal” childhood. As if. My ability to summon and communicate with critters grew until they were forced to ask Grandma Hester for help. They didn’t know how to deal with a miniature Doctor Doolittle.

I’m only copy and pasting stuff here because I’m too lazy to type out the long back story of the heroine. Hey come on, at least I don’t just cut and paste the entire synopsis provided by the author or publisher and then add three sentences telling you to go buy that thing—that counts, right?

Grandma Hester opened a pet-finding agency called, what else, Finders Pet Detective Agency, and eventually Kandi inherits the business when her grandmother dies while on a helicopter in search of a movie star’s lost tiger.

Then there is the neighbor, Dutch Callaghan.

He reminds of that guy who plays Thor in the movies.

Oh, so he’s on PEDs and has the neck of an emu?

I even baked the ass some “welcome to the neighborhood” cookies. He took one bite and dumped them in the trash. I’ll admit I’m not the best cook in the world, but that was downright rude.

Then the bastard said, “I don’t do pity fucks.”

I was so stunned, I just stood there gaping at him. With a nasty smile Dutch stomped off.

Uh-oh, the cringe is back, and sadly, it doesn’t go away.

The rest of the story is set on +9,999 over the top madness, and it’s just too much for me.

Basically, the heroine disguises herself as a nun to rescue a dog from an illegal dog fighting ring, only to demonstrate her abilities to kick-box and hai-yaaaah in a wacky, kooky way. This unfortunately endangers Dutch’s cover—yes, he’s an undercover cop—and now he’s looking for the Ninja Nun, while she’s hungry for his honey bun but at the same time not really keen on letting him know that she’s the nun he is after.

While on paper this sounds like a fun, wacky plot, the story is flooded with animals behaving “funny” and making a lot of noise, our heroine flailing around and acting over the top like she’s a dead frog constantly being electrocuted for laughs, and the whole thing is just exhausting and way over to follow.

Maybe it’s too over for me because I’m actually over the whole thing, as I don’t find the author’s forced “wacky” humor funny.

I know, I know, someone else may be rolling around on the floor laughing while reading this, but this is my review, which means my reaction to this thing, so too bad, no five oogies today.

As for the hero, he’s barely there except to be an ass and make the heroine go all moist with excitement. You know how it is—this is romance, so anything and everything is fine as long as the guy is hot.

Now, I don’t mind a fun bad boy myself, but poor Dutch has such an over the top douchebag introduction—see above—and he barely has any meaningful character interaction here. That fellow never has any chance. He may as well be a vibrator that, when switched on, also calls the user all kinds of insults because the user gets off on that kind of thing.

Actually, there isn’t much of anything else here either. Just wacky, wacky, wacky animals and the heroine going wacky, wacky, wacky in the most exaggerated manner.

Somebody else will have to like this one, I’m afraid. I’m all out of love and feel only relief when I reach the last page.