Hotwire by Cindy M. Hogan | Blog Tour + Review

Hotwire | Cindy M. Hogan

Pages: 335

Genre(s): Action/Adventure, YA, Contemporary

Published: October 20, 2014 | O'Neal Publishing 

Format: Ebook

Source: Publisher 

Goodreads 

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo 

* I received this copy in exchange for an honest review. *

Division spy Christy Hadden can't wait for her latest assignment posing as a student at a prestigious New York City academy and car thief extraordinaire.

The best part of the mission is her attractive handler, Jeremy, and her new team. The worst part? The sociopath masquerading as the academy's most popular guy.

But soon she realizes the car thieves are much more than they seem. Her simple spying mission becomes more dangerous than anyone imagined. If the organization discovers her true identity, they won't hesitate to kill her, and if she fails, others will suffer the same fate.

Young Adults, teens and adults will love this exciting suspenseful adventure with a dash of romance. You won't want to put it down.

Hey fANGIRL Readers, 

After reading the synopsis and thinking, "Mmm, I haven't read anything like this before." I decided to give it a try. I was super pumped to dive into this story, that I even began reading it an entire week before my tour date. But I will admit that my expectations were a bit high, and I was left just a tad bit disappointed.

Hotwire follows our protagonist Christy Hadden, a 19 year old spy. She works for an agency called " Division 57 ", who is preparing her for her next mission. Christy must go undercover as Amber Smith, to investigate a string of car thefts at A.G Bell Academy, a prestigious engineering prep school in New York. She's not alone as her team, Agents Hallius, Ace, and Jeremy, back her up every step of the way.

I really enjoyed Christy as our main character. I loved how independent she was, never relying on anyone to retrieve information, or to solve a problem for her. She came across as such a go-getter, and because of this, alot of breakthroughs in the case were done on her behalf. As I mentioned above, she wasn't alone on this mission at all, and as much as I want to give her credit for the success they've accomplished, I definitely have to applaud her back up as well. First up is Agent Hallius Moreau. He's much older than Christy, and served as her shadow on most missions. Next we have Agent Amedee Renaud better known as Ace, who was the computer geek of the crew. He was also older than Christy, and had the purpose of hacking, as well as creating trackers, and other cool gadgets. I definitely liked his character, especially since I have such a love for technology. Last but not least, we have Jeremy McGinnis. He was the leader of the team, also known as the handler, and surprisingly was Christy's crush. I did not see that coming!

After pin pointing who may be involved with the car thefts, Christy begins to form friendships with them, with the sole purpose of coming up with a lead. I will agree, this was a brillant idea, and the plot pretty much focused around this aspect. But, everything happened sooooo quickly!

Within just a couple of days of attending the academy, Christy had:

A boyfriend named Viktor, who just so happened to be the nephew of Alexander, the evil mastermind behind the thefts. 

A friend named Carson who she met on the first day at the school's dance, who weirdly had a crush on her. 

Hank, who she considered a good friend, but only conversated with a few times in the entire story.

Gina and Karina, two shy girls she met on the first day.

Oh and Jericho, one of the car thieves, who also had some sort of crush on her. 

Now, I know the purpose of these "situationships" were to use these students to gather insight on the mission, however, I wish there was more of a "build-up" to these friendships. I felt as though from the gate things were happening too quickly, especially the relationship she had with Viktor, as well as the instant-crush some of the boys had on Christy. I remember being super confused around chapter 20 when Viktor and "Amber" were having a conversation in the hallway.

" It's crazy, even though I didn't get alot of sleep, it wasn't hard to get up at all. Not at all. And I realized why as I drove to school this morning. It's because I knew I'd get to see my girl and get a bit of action. "

Wait what just happened !

My eyes literally bugged out of my head when I finally realized that they were dating. I even skipped back a few chapters, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. I hadn't, and this really made me hope that later on in the story, more of the characters and or situations would be better explained. Another example would be the character Hank. As I mentioned before, Christy didn't interact with him that much, so when a scene occurred involving him, it was really hard to believe her emotion. She was absolutely hysterical, and I again found myself flipping backwards through the chapters, making sure I didn't overlook any details concerning their friendship. This became a constant problem for me, being that I couldn't connect with any of the supporting characters due to their lack of "story" and appearance within this book. 

Now, on to what I enjoyed the most about Hotwire!

Any novel about a spy needs some type of action included right? Of course, and I will say that Ms.Hogan definitely delivered!

The last 40 pages of the book is so jam backed with action, I was literally on the edge of my seat! So many plot twists occurred that I had zero clue as to how the story was going to end. I definitely want to applaud the author for the realism she served with the fighting scenes in the story. Christy was indeed a human girl, with no superhuman powers, (she did have a cool photographic memory though) and it was refreshing to see her in battle. She didn't do any outlandish mortal kombat moves, instead she fought as anyone would inspect her to. She was extremely quick on her feet, and used her wits to include surrounding resources to take down her opponents. You go girl!

I must say that I really should raise the rating for Hotwire to atleast 3.8 stars instead of the 3.5 I currently have. Even though I wasn't invested and couldn't connect to majority of the characters, I still very much enjoyed Christy and her incredibly lovable crew. I also wished there could have been more romance between Jeremy and Christy, especially since they were crushing on each other. But I understand Jeremy's decision to not want to jeopardize Christy's job with the Division as well as the mission. Atleast we received a cute kissing scene!

For anyone of my readers who are looking for an action story, with a cool kick ass heroine, and a crew of just as amazing spies, I most certainly recommend this!

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