Driven to Distraction (Hollywood Heat Novels) [Paperback]

This book started out hot and steamy and never stopped being hot and steamy. Okay, so the lust was over the top, but it was an interesting story about Hollywood stuntmen and women. It was a fast read and I enjoyed it.

STORY BRIEF:
Jay is stranded by the side of the road. Blaina stops to help. They go to his place for an anonymous carnal romp. A few days later she arrives on the set of her next feature film and finds out Jay is her boss. Blaina is an up-and-coming stuntwoman. Jay is in charge of all stunts. Jay doesn't want to be involved with Blaina because he thinks it will distract him from safety at work. However, they can't stay away from each other. They see each other after work but pretend to be uninvolved co-workers during the day.

REVIEWER'S OPINION:
The purpose of this book is erotic romance. The sex scenes are well written and imaginative. There is a lot of sex in, on and around cars. There is sex in public places, minor bondage, spanking and rear door activity. The story was a good backdrop for all of this sex. I enjoyed reading about stuntmen and behind the scenes movie-making. There is a lot of car talk which I enjoyed. It was fun. I enjoyed the characters as well. My major problem was with the method of separating the couple near the end, described in the Spoiler below.

I loved something which I wish more authors would do. A "Cast and Crew List" is in the front of the book. It lists all of the characters in the book with their job titles and/or relationships. In this way, the author doesn't need to spend as much time describing characters in the book, and it's easy to flip to while reading. I only flipped to it once or twice during the reading, so it wasn't critical, but I liked having it.

DATA:
Story length: 260 pages. Swearing language: strong. Sexual language: strong/erotic. Number of sex scenes: 13. Total number of sex scene pages: 64. Setting: current day Los Angeles, California area. Copyright: 2008. Genre: erotic contemporary romance.

OTHER BOOKS:
To date, I've read one other story by Ashleigh Raine. I gave 3 stars to "Orgasm Fairy," copyright 2005, which appears in the anthology "Legendary Tails IV." My 3 star review for the anthology was posted on 12/20/08.

CAUTION SPOILER:
Jay wanted to keep their relationship secret so it wouldn't distract him from safety at work. He wanted to keep seeing her into the future secretly, but not publicly. Blaina didn't want to hide their relationship and broke up with him. I had trouble accepting Jay's logic, because they were doing a great job at work. I'm also not sure I liked Blaina getting so mad at him. I found the resolution of the problem weak, Jay just changed his mind after thinking about it some more. I wish the author would have used a different means of conflict. If readers are looking for a lot of hot sex and don't mind the conflict, they should be happy.