Book Crack

Please join me in welcoming fabulous Harlequin Blaze author Samantha Hunter to the lair today!

Hello Bandits! Thanks to Beth and the gang for having me by today... I hope we’ll have a lot of fun.

You might find the title of my blog confusing – I’m not talking about that ever present debate of cracking bindings or not, but about those books that we hook into like a drug…when we read them, we have to have more, and the cliffhangers leave us needing a new fix, and soon!

For me, I’ve found two series like that recently, Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series, which I stumbled across completely by accident on Kindle free reads and thought, hey, I’ll try it… I had no idea that I wouldn’t be able to pull my head out of that series until I had read the last line of the most recent book, which ended on a cruel cliffhanger and readers now have to wait a year! In the meantime, I’ve gone back to read her Highlander books, to sort of ease off that addiction.

Before Moning, I was into Richelle Mead’s Dark Swan series… just two books so far, but I read them with rapt attention. I like them much better, even, than the succubus series.

And before that, earlier this year, was Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mystery series, which I again read one after the other until the last, and very happy to find there is a new one coming out in a few weeks.

I enjoy many books, which are very good reads, but there’s something special about a series you get so hooked into that you can’t put it down, and that doesn’t happen too often for me – to have found 3 in one year is unusual. I think whatever makes certain reads “book crack” to each individual reader has to be different, because I know people who get grabbed by books that I couldn’t get halfway into the first in the series. It’s great that we all like different things. *G*



With the series I mention above, there were strong, capable, smart female protagonists who I wanted to root for, lots of action, smart plotting, sexy, intelligent heroes, and a lot of originality. The romance was the subplot in all three series, all were very sexy (though the mysteries not as sexy as the first two) and they all had overarching plots as well as the story of the book. They also had powerful secondary characters who were more than props. So… these are all important qualities to me in making any read book crack.

What about you? What’s the most recent series or “book crack” you’ve read that you just couldn’t pull yourself out of, or the one that you found yourself skipping meals for, staying up far too late, or snapping at anyone who dared to interrupt while you were reading? *G*

And I hope you’ll check out my current Blaze release, Caught in the Act, part of a 4-book miniseries, Dressed To Thrill (revolving around heroines who receive the wrong costume than one they ordered for various events, and that mistake changes their lives) that has been a lot of fun to write. Also, you can catch up with our Twitter Online reads which are spinoffs of the Dressed to Thrill books, one new story each month, written round-robin style on Twitter – for more, check out http://www.tweettweetlove.com/

At the end of today, I’ll give away one set of 4 Dressed to Thrill books to one lucky poster today, along with a Halloween goodie! (since my book, Caught in the Act, begins at a Halloween party).

Let’s talk book crack! *G*