Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to cry after I finished the book, and not in any sort of good way. They’re called Kate O’Hare and Nick Fox, but aside from surface characteristics (he’s handsome! She’s an FBI agent!) they have NOTHING in common with the characters I’ve grown attached to over the past five books. “The Big Kahuna” suffers from a lack of everything that makes the previous installments good: lack of a con, lack of a crew, lack of sassy banter, lack of amusing situations, and lack of character development. I don’t know if Evanovich is tired of writing this series, but it sure reads that way. She’s so un-invested in her own characters that she resorts to tired and repetitive descriptions of their reactions to events - for example, I lost count of how many times Nick “gave a crooked smile” or Kate “rolled her eyes.” We get it; he’s adorable and she’s grumpy. Yawn. I’ve been waiting for this book for YEARS - “Nick and Kate go undercover as a married couple”!! Their relationship has always been one of the most compelling parts of the story for me: watching how they interact, how they slowly let one another into their lives and hearts. (In book 4, Nick introduced Kate to Lucie in case things ever go badly! In book 5, Kate admits she has “serious feelings for” Nick!) What happened to the man who kissed Kate and told her she was “everything” to him?! Because he is totally absent from TBK. Same with the woman who was trying to come to terms with her commitment to her job vs her involvement with a felon. The lead characters in this book occasionally have sex, but only after long chapters with scattered references to Nick basically pestering Kate to do it and her almost continually turning him down. There’s hardly a hint that she’s even attracted to him, and definitely no hints at all as to anything deeper. Look, we all know that the romance between them was always the “B” plot - heck, maybe even the “C” plot - but it was there, it existed, and it was progressing. Somewhere in the space of time from the end of “The Pursuit” to the start of “The Big Kahuna” both Nick and Kate had their minds wiped, at least as to their emotional connection to one another. And all these complaints are front-loaded before I confront the abysmal story. The plot, which is usually a rollicking ride of daring risks and laugh out loud humor, reads more like passages from a Hawaiian guide book/road map. About halfway through I realized that I was bored - the only reason I bothered to finish reading was the hope that there would be something recognizable about Nick and/or Kate by the time the book ended. Alas, dear readers, there was not. Tl;dr summary: Fox and O’Hare fans, don’t bother with this one. There’s no scam, no romance, and no crew. Any story you make up in your head about Nick and Kate will be far superior to this disappointing waste of time.