Touched by an alien

by Gini Koch

Paper Book, 2010

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Series

Katherine "Kitty" Katt (1)

Genres

Publication

New York, NY : DAW Books : Distributed by Penguin Group (USA), c2010.

Description

Touched by an Alien is the thrilling first installment of the Alien novels. Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt had just finished a day on jury duty. When she stepped out of the Pueblo Caliente courthouse, all she was thinking about was the work she had to get caught up on. Then her attention was caught by a fight between a couple that looked like it was about to turn ugly. But ugly didn't even begin to cover it when the "man" suddenly transformed into a huge, winged monster right out of a grade Z science fiction movie and went on a deadly killing spree. In hindsight, Kitty realized she probably should have panicked and run screaming the way everyone around her was doing. Instead, she sprinted into action to take down the alien. In the middle of all the screeching and the ensuing chaos, a hunk in an Armani suit suddenly appeared beside her, introduced himself as Jeff Martini with "the agency," and then insisted on leading her to a nearby limo to talk to his "boss." And that was how Kitty's new life among the aliens began � "Futuristic high-jinks and gripping adventure." "This delightful romp has many interesting twists and turns as it glances at racism, politics, and religion en route."… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member SnowNSew

Review: This book has been on my TBR list for quite a while. I haven’t read it sooner for the simple reason that my daughter refuses to read books about aliens. (They are too real, go figure.) I did, however, manage to get the gals (and guys) over at the GoodReads group Girls, Guns, & Grimoires

to make this Book of the Month, so reading along was kinda obligational. And, I am glad I did. I enjoyed it. Probably not quite as much as I wanted to, but I did enjoy it.

I loved the “Men in Armani” set up for the story. It definitely brought along vibes of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and the accompanying grins and giggles. There is definitely snark to be found between the pages. Our heroine’s family has 4 (big) dogs. And, ya just gotta love Kitty.

But, somehow, somewhere along the way it became just a bit too contrived with too many beautiful people for me. All the Alpha Centauris, or A-Cs as they are more often called, are gorgeous. I mean heart-stoppingly good looking. Now, push out your bottom lip. Really, really, REALLY ridiculously good looking. Yet, the gorgeous women (scientists) want nothing to do with the A-C men because - wait for it - they are not smart enough. They prefer less attractive earth men. Yep. It is a geek paradise buried down in Area 51 – all sorts of gorgeous females looking for nothing beyond intelligence in their men. This, of course, leaves all these hunks looking beyond their race for their love interests. Enter one Katherine, Kitty, Katt.

Mr. Armani immediately falls for Kitty. I mean immediately. This goes beyond love at first sight. Mr. Armani’s cousin also has a ‘thing’ for her. Let the eye rolling commence.

These guys immediately take Kitty under their wing. They also immediately take her parents under their wing. And their menagerie of pets. Which, did I mention, includes 4 large dogs? These dogs include a pit bull named Duchess. Ok, I must make mention that I am a sucker for dogs. Especially pit bulls. So, I really appreciated this view of this misunderstood breed: “I thought pit bulls were deadly killers,” he said as he put her down.” “Only if they’re trained to it. Otherwise, you’re in greater danger of being licked to death.” Yep. That fits the ones I’ve known.

Back to the story – There is a lot of action as we chase after the supreme bad guy, auspiciously named Mephistopheles. There really isn’t a lot of mystery or suspense, just kick assery. And, our Ms. Kitty is quickly elevated to the leader of our expedition to take out the villain. With hair spray. Extra hold hair spray. I must admit to enjoying the ride – there is much snark to be found.

However, the amount of belief that must be suspended to ‘buy’ that all these guys are ridiculously good looking yet want intelligence in their ‘significant others’ was more than I could easily do. Added to that, the speed with which these advanced beings with talents and experience beyond our years throws out their game plan and starts listening to Kitty was mind-boggling. Yes. I can believe in aliens. And parasites. Just don’t give me gorgeousness and leadership. Those I cannot swallow.

In addition to being gorgeous, these dudes are apparently the best lovers ever to have graced the planet. And, with two hearts, they have lots of stamina. Sigh. Moreover, we are shown all this in glowing detail. I much prefer the sex to go on behind closed doors. A private moment for people to share. Furthermore, it really felt like the sex was thrown in not to advance the story, but just for the sake of putting sex in. While I can tolerate it if there is purpose, without purpose it just annoys me.

I really, REALLY wanted to love this book. In fact, it may well have suffered because I anticipated loving it more than I did. There are already six more nice sized novels in the series, amply providing me a refuge from life. I’m not entirely convinced I care enough to seek said refuge here.

I would rate it 3.5 stars – but I am rounding down due to extraneous sex.

Funny thing about this book . . . Even though I did an immense amount of eye rolling while reading it, it did make me smile. And, here a week after I finished it, I still think about it with a smile on my face. So, feel free to roll your eyes, but prepare yourself for a wild ride.

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24 more

LibraryThing member FantasyDreamer

When I first started reading Touched by an Alien, I felt it was a bit cliche and was wondering where the book was going. Well, it didn't take long for me to figure it out, it was "Men in Black" meets romance while looking very, very good in Armani. The tried and true of what you know in the worlds

of fun science fiction, adventure, romance and snark is to be found here. I had so were many dejavu feel-good moments throughout this book, that it was one of those that I wished wouldn't end. As you can tell, I loved, absolutely loved this book!

Kitty was so much fun as the snarky and smart heroine who always speaks her mind. Martini, one of her possible love interests, was so damn sexy and lovable with his heroic sensitivity that I feel hard for him myself. There are so many more memorable characters but really you need to read this for yourself to know what I'm talking about here.

I'll also say that I'm more of a Urban Fantasy/Paranormal romance reader so this book being more based in the realm of science fiction is a bit outside of my realm of reading. This being the case, I put off reading this one until I started seeing the glowing reviews. I'm so glad I read this one sooner rather than later.

Anyways, I can't wait for Alien Tango to come out, I really need me some more A-C alien lovin'! As a matter of fact, I want my own Martini and five minutes alone in an elevator. ;)

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LibraryThing member raboyer

Amusing Aliens

This book gets a definite 5 out of 5 gnomes for humor, characters, having a very sci-fi action movie type cover, superbeing fighting, and for being a supremely fun read. I checked this book out from the library and definitely plan on buying it so I can reread it.

First, a funny story

about what happened after I finished reading Touched by an Alien. The next book that I read just happened to have a character named Martin but each and every time I came across the name Martin in the book I kept reading is as Martini. So now you've been warned that this book may indeed stick with you.

There's action right from the beginning as Kitty sees an altercation where a man seems to be changing into a monster. She then proceeds to kill the monster by stabbing a jellyfish looking thing that's attached to him with a Mont Blanc pen. Then all of a sudden men in suits show up to take care of everything and whisk Kitty away.

I love the references to Men in Black, a truly awesome movie, that Kitty keeps making as these guys are pretty evasive about who they are at first. Kitty figures these guys out pretty quick since the aliens or Alpha Centaurians are really bad at lying.

This book has a little bit of everything and is a lot of fun to read. I love that their transference devices (transporters) are located in Men's bathrooms at air ports. Kitty's parents and her menagerie of pets are very entertaining especially Dutchess. I too would have the same problem with the alarm clock that Kitty did. While reading you have the feeling that it would be great to be friends with these characters especially Reader, Lorraine and Claudia. Speaking of friends, I have the feeling that her friend Chuckie, a conspiracy buff, might play a part in later books.

There are two love interests thrown into the mix. There's Jeff Martini and Christopher White. Martini is an empath, which makes things very interesting throughout the story. Christopher has the power to change images which lets him make sure pictures of aliens and superbeings don't show up everywhere. He also has what Kitty calls a "patented glare" this glare can vary in severeness. There are indeed some steamy scenes for Kitty. I am firmly on the side of Team Martini even though in the book her Mom seemed to like Christopher more but of course everyone has their own opinions.

There's plenty of action and even some explosions. The bad guy is one heck of a character with quite the back story, goes by the devilish name Mephistopheles. Kitty is such an awesome heroine with her love of music and her sense of humor. There's love, betrayal, aliens, and more. This is a one of those books that you just know you're going to read over and over. I personally would love to see a TV show or movie made from this and future books.

Martini and Kitty have quite an intense chemistry between them and I can't wait to see what happens next.

A great quote from toward the end of the book,
"Martini smiled and I saw my future."
The ending of this book is wrapped up well and the story continues in the next book Alien Tango.

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LibraryThing member pacey1927

Don't let that horribly embarrassing title fool you. "Touched By an Alien", the first in a series by Gini Koch, ended up being absolutely adorable but every time someone noticed what I was reading I was a little embarrassed. I love the cover though and thought it really fit the book.

Anyway the

title unfortunately wasn't the only cringe worthy aspect, as the heroines name is Kitty Katt. No really.

The plot was unique and fun. Kitty Katt accidentally saves the day when a monster shows up downtown and wrecks havoc on the city. Immediately she is ushered away from the scene by a group of government officials. Who end up being Aliens from another planet. But these are the good aliens, and that big old nasty monster Kitty killed? He was a bad alien. Soon enough they want to recruit Kitty.

Enter into this amazing world. The characters are fleshed out and won my heart immediately. Kitty is surrounded by handsome, fun, alien men, but one immediately stands out to her. His name is Jeff Martini and he has declared his love for Kitty and wants to marry her. Jeff isn't your standard hero either. He comes with some alien baggage and yet is witty and a little crazy and a lot of fun. Her parents are unusual and a lot of fun. I hope to see them a lot in upcoming books.
The action sequences are among some of the most intense, but plain fun, that I have read. The monsters and Kitty's solutions to killing them are really unique.

Overall this book was really good. There were some cheesy things that I could have lived without (including the title) but this book is so different and kinda quirky. I really think fantasy and paranormal readers would get a huge kick out of this series. I hope it gets some love.

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LibraryThing member quigui

Touched by an Alien is the story of Katherine “Kitty” Katt, who goes from being a marketing manager in Pueblo Caliente to helping an Alien Agency to protect the Earth from nasty things from Earth. The thing is, all the aliens in this agency are drop dead gorgeous (the author turned a major flaw

in romance fiction into a feature!), and the hunk (Armani-clad!) that first appears to help her is ready to make his moves on her.

The book drops you right into the action. One minute Kitty is leaving the court house, the next a man sprouts huge wings and starts attacking everyone. Not to be cowered, Kitty rummages her purse in search of a suitable weapon, finds a pen, gets off her high heel shoes (sensible girl!) and goes for the kill.

When the Armani-clad hunk, Jeff Martini, appears to save the day, the day is quite saved already. Of course there needs to be some damage control, after all a winged monster just appeared in broad daylight and started to attack people, so Kitty is escorted by Martini and the rest of his entourage (all of them male, all of them gorgeous) to a safe place.

And then the flirting starts. Because Martini is very impressed with our girl and makes his claim soon enough. And keeps doing it, to the point that I felt like screaming “Down boy!” (later I realised I should also have been saying “Down, girl!”).

After the initial action the plot starts to drag a bit, mostly because there is a lot of information being dumped on the reader (and on Kitty, I suppose), but since it is all new, aliens and monsters and other things from space, it's to be expected. Once the plot is moving again, it becomes much better, and goes much faster. And faster means fast, because this book is a page turner, and what is refreshing is that it does not rely on cliffhangers – you genuinely want to know what happens next.

The story was entertaining, and I was chuckling on the right parts at the beginning. Then the jokes got old, and I started to get a bit tired of all the banter. Because if there is something in this book is a lot of banter between characters. There are a lot of cheesy lines (and cheesy pick-up lines), and they soon lose their charm. Also, some of the characters lose a bit of their charm towards the end of the book, especially Kitty (so sensible in the beginning, taking of her shoes before running, only to end up going into a battle with her purse. And her iPod. And her hairspray).

As a Fantasy and Science Fiction aficionado I had some trouble with the believability of this book. This book gets its Science Fiction more from blockbuster movies than the genre literature. There are explosions, monsters, parasites and aliens, but most ends up serving as backdrop to the romance. But there is some development of the plot, and that, I liked. I liked the story of the parasites (once they were on Earth, that is. The idea of jellyfish-like parasites travelling on Space... *shudders*) and the aliens, and even the religion aspect of it.

On the romance part, though, I have nothing to complain about. Well, it was predictable with whom our heroine was going to end up with, but I don't think the author ever wanted it to be a mystery. There was also a hint of what could have been a love triangle, but it was dealt with as a means to character development and not to throw angst at the reader.

If you're a big romance fan, and don't care much about getting the science right, this book is probably for you. If you, like me, like your science fiction to be more about science, you can still enjoy this book as light reading, for the romance and the chuckles.

Also at Spoilers and Nuts

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LibraryThing member snitchbitch

There was a fabulous little detail in this book that threw me at first: within 2 minutes of meeting our heroine - Katherine "Kitty" Katt - the male lead asks for her hand in marriage.

It's not long before you realise how seat-of-your-pants these guys fly, and you spend most of this book enjoying the

banter between Kitty and Martini - the handsome alien on a mission to protect Earth from a parasitic race determined to rule or destroy it. Only downside to the witty banter is that she's too witty. Is that a criticism? If it is, it's the only one I can make about this book.

There are some truly amazing moments in this story that would do well in a movie, and those aren't limited to the all-out action hero scenes. The world needs more SciFi Comedy movies, and I hope a film-maker out there has this book in their sights.

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LibraryThing member Jac8604

Not great, but solidly good. Despite some info dumping and pacing issues, it was fun. I'll definitely check out the next one in this series.

LibraryThing member rosetyper9

I am still in shock over how much I adored this book. I started reading and I was hooked, no doubt about it. I love Kitty's personality, snarkiness, and family. They are all so amazingly written. Ok, now I will try to articulate the awesomeness.

The characters in this story know exactly what they

are about. They know what they want, where they are going, and who their enemy is. I admire that in a character. They all are also so snarky and sarcastic, including Kitty's parents and I love snarky sarcastic people too. Not to mention everyone is smart and sexy. The emotions the characters felt also felt real for me as a reader. The anger and sadness Kitty felt over Cox, I felt too, even though I didn't know him either. The bad guys, oh, the bad guys, are vile...my opinion on the aliens as a whole was that the author made their evilness portrayed on the outside, they were ugly because they were evil and all the gorgeous aliens were great people on the inside so they were beautiful on the outside.

The plot moves fast...there was not waiting around for anything. It was like "oh look, a bad guy", "oh look, a bad guy" and then it rinsed and repeated. I loved everything, there was so much action and so many smart moves in order to get rid of the bad guys. I adored this book so much, now I want to cry while I wait for the next because it doesn't come out until December.

I also think I should say I dislike science fiction. I don't aliens and spaceships and all that stuff, I just don't like reading it, BUT, this book blew me away. Simply amazing!

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LibraryThing member AbundanceofBooks

Kitty is leaving jury duty early when she witnesses a fender bender that quickly escalates into an insane winged man (with a jelly fish thing attached to him) attacking everyone within reach. The people dying, and the realization that this guys is enjoying the chaos and death, causes Kitty to react

on instinct - grab weapon (a pen) and go stab the crazy winged guy right through the jellyfish thing on his back. Her years of track and some martial arts training help her react on instinct and before she knows it, the guy is dead, the police are headed for her, and a hottie in Armani (and no wedding ring) is taking her away for a debriefing.

She's suddenly thrust into a super secret world of aliens, former Mossad agents (her mother), presidential task force members (her mom again), NASA code breakers, giant fuglies bent on destruction, and super hot aliens! The aliens want to recruit Kitty to work for them, which she's still thinking about while on the run from a terrorist and a giant space monster who are trying to kill her. On the bright side, did we mention all the aliens are hot? Did we mention one wants to marry her?

Touched By An Alien was a fun and fast paced romp of an alien adventure. There were times that Kitty's "feminine intuition" were making leaps that defied the narrative, but just go with it, it's explained. I loved her pop culture references, the sarcasm, the humor, and her very loving and overly protective family. Jeff Martini (head hottie alien) was a cute character and quite a departure from most alpha males. As an empath he's very sensitive to people's emotions but is also pretty open and honest about his own. He thinks Kitty is fantastic from the get go, and pursues her pretty relentlessly. Yes, their relationship moves quickly, but it's explained that as an empath Martini can know somebody very well and deeply in a short amount of time. While I felt that the world building was well done, there was a lot of "science" that had to be explained and I thought it got a bit... much. I can't think of a better way to explain it. It wasn't unnecessary, cumbersome, or drawn out, there was just a lot of explaining. That being said, Touched By An Alien had me laughing out loud several times, I really enjoyed it.

Loads of fun! This book struck me as more of a science fiction romance with a definite sense of humor and the sci-fi elements were well explained. If science fiction isn't your thing, you might want to pick this one up at the library first. I give it 4 stars.

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LibraryThing member TheLibraryhag

Kitty is just your average girl until the day she witnesses a monster attack and decides to attack the monster back. Now she is part of an elite group, made up mostly of incredibly hunky aliens who protect the world from parasites who turn normal people into monsters.

This book is too much fun.

Kitty and her family are great. The aliens are a study in "smarter isn't always better". The world is well developed but not terribly complicated. There is plenty of action and a few red hot love scenes too. Kitty is all human (at least I think she is) with no special powers. She snarks the best of them. Enjoy.

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LibraryThing member Bollygal

I loved this book!!!! I just placed my Amazon order for the rest of this series. I really like Kitty( Kick- Butt) Gal! Thrills,Banter,Sexy,Action what more could you ask for,

LibraryThing member MlleEhreen

Here's the thing. I liked touched by an alien just fine. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time reading it but at the same time I had no desire to pick up the sequel. I waited a couple of weeks to write this review, and now I can hardly remember what happened. I

mean, there's the monster, and the Mont Blanc pen (which I remember because I'm a fountain pen fanatic), and Jeff is really into Kitty and Kitty's a pretty cool gal who, despite being thrown kind of at random into this bizarre Alien task force nonetheless comes up with all the good ideas and solves all the problems. All the guys are really attractive but they totally crush on her anyhow, apparently because the alien ladies are ballbreakers, which is a little sad.

It's a nice mix of genres and it's full of wacky twists and turns, the way an old mystery might be - a puzzle game rather than a book with living, breathing characters.

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LibraryThing member Larou

This book was intended as a fast and fluffy read after heroically battling my way through all of War and Peace, but as you can tell from the three novels I managed to read in the time it took me to finish this one, things did not work out that way. I really wanted to like this book, as the concept

is very cute: A bunch of gorgeous, Armani-suited aliens is fighting a secret war against a horde of horrendous, over-sized other aliens, and our heroine and first-person narrator becomes involved in this conflict, falls in love with the aliens (the gorgeous ones, I should add) and fights evil (in form of the horrendous aliens). There’s a kick-ass heroine, there’s super-strong, gorgeous male aliens and super-intelligent, equally gorgeous female ones, there’s slimy monsters and lots of intentionally cheesy pulp Sci-Fi – all the ingredients for an enjoyable and funny romp, one would think – but it just tasted bland and did not work for me at all.

The problem seems to me that Gini Koch, although she comes across as a very nice person, just is not a good writer – the protagonist is just too good to be true and a clear case of auctorial wish-fulfillment, all the other characters are paper-thin, the plot has no pacing to speak of and just strings one event after another. Even comic fiction should have some kind of coherency that goes beyond a breathless iteration of “and then… and then… and then…”, some kind of story arc and, dare I say it, character development, all of which is sadly absent in Touched by an Alien. It was a real slog to get through, and probably would have ended up DNF if had not already bought the second volume in the series. I might give that a try some time and see whether Gini Koch as improved her writing skills any, but I’m not in any particularly hurry to do so.

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LibraryThing member camibrite

This is a well-titled book. You just know going in that it's going to be over the top. My problem with this series is that there isn't much real conflict between the characters. It's all about getting the bad guys vanquished so our heroine can go back to swooning over her

more-gorgeous-than-anyone-could-possibly-be (and therefore perfect) boyfriend.

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LibraryThing member KDSarge

This is a good book, mainly because I love a good mayhem story. The heroine is smart and strong without a need to punch people to prove it. I felt the book would have been better if it weren't in first person, but that only caught me a couple times.

LibraryThing member ItsBookishMe

Review This book is weird, and I do like and appreciate weird but this was really bad weird. Horrible head scratching dialogue that made me afraid to read any more, annoying characters that just say the darnedest things, but not in the funny or cute way, more...cringe-worthy . "She's mine". She's

mine". She's mine". Oh my god, how many times did Martini said that to everyone, and that's on the same day he met Kitty. It was so very annoying, he came across more six year old caveman kid than charming, sexy alien. Listening to the audiobook probably just made things worse too. Maybe I'm wrong, but I figured the story is suppose to be quirky, funny, and youthfully charming, but the narrator's voice sounded too proper and old. Made me detach from the story instead of making me excited to get into. And wow, (bad wow) her male characters sounded like caricatures of male voices, so bad.

Maybe it gets better because I can see that ratings go up with every book and anyway this one does have pretty decent ratings. Expected it would be a fun book to listen to while I keep busy, so I was surprised at how cheesy the whole thing is, and not cheesy in a purposeful way to make me laugh. As of now, I'm still thinking I might try again one day to see if it does get better.

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LibraryThing member ThothJ

It was a really fun book. Despite being a bit "Mary Sue" at times, with the heroine "Kitty" seeming to know everything and having the solutions to far to many problems. Then there is the how matter of ALL of the Aliens being otherwordly attractive and handsome. But those issues aside, the book was

fun to read; a real brain-break from the normal series history non-fiction I tend to read the most. I really did enjoy it and am starting book number 2 in the series today.

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LibraryThing member Cynical_Ames

A mash-up of "Men In Black" and "Ghostbusters" with a central "McGyver" character. Intriguing premise. The sex scenes were steamy and the humour sometimes funny but the writing, in general, needed serious tweaking.

Fugly. That word has been (possibly temporarily) removed from my personal dictionary.

"Baby" and "girlfriend" as terms of endearments should be banned. My lovely Kindle can illustrate why:

fugly = 39 mentions (mostly in the second half of the book) -used by Kitty.
baby = 22 mentions (as a term of endearment) - used by Martini (love interest) when referring to Kitty.
girlfriend = 21 mentions (as a term of endearment) - used by the only gay character when referring to Kitty. Ugh.

Thesaurus. It's there for a reason. Be imaginative when referring to a loved one or, you know, call them by their actual name.

The first 25% was a nightmare to get through as Kitty asked a torrent of questions to establish the world-building and get to know the aliens. It was difficult to keep up, especially since Kitty would make huge "intuitive leaps" when I couldn't figure out where she got the information to make such assumptions. She was also unbelievably arrogant in the way she told the professionals they were doing everything wrong:

"Feel free to tell us what you, having less than two days of this kind of experience, would like the rest of us do. You know, those of us who have spent years, or merely our entire lives in this line of work."

Kitty doesn't know the meaning of "tact" and "diplomatic". She had a different perspective on things but she wasn't willing to be even a little polite about it. When she wasn't putting them down she was ogling and drooling over how naturally attractive all of the A-Cs are. I didn't see why she was the only one to come up with all of the brilliant ideas since most of the A-Cs had either lived on this planet for over 40 years or were born on it. You'd think a few of them would've learned what kills slugs or would've heard of Earth's history with religion.

Religion. The A-C's religion changed to reflect Judaism right after Kitty compared it to that when explaining to her parents. And perhaps I'm being oversensitive to these next two issues but Martini says they're all circumcised to appear more human -like being uncircumcised is somehow unnatural. Men are born that way, that's human/natural enough for me.

Martini, the love interest, was hugely annoying to begin with. From the get-go he's overly flirty verging on overbearing with the sexual harassment and proposes to Kitty within minutes, possibly an hour of meeting her. Some of his attraction to Kitty is later explained but Christopher's interest was hard to fathom unless it was due to brotherly rivalry, only it didn't come across that way.

I'm also unhappy with the dog-on-human violence. Duchess, the pitbull, followed Kitty's actions by attacking an unarmed and physically non-threatening male. The dog teared into the guy's groin. He made rape threats but was unable to carry them out as the women surrounding him had confiscated his guns. This upset me. If the dog saw her owner being attacked and it responded on it's own or Kitty called for help then I would've felt differently. Instead Kitty instructed the dog to attack someone who wasn't in a position to hurt anyone. This is a hot topic in the UK and pitbulls are subject to the Dangerous Dogs Act because they're so aggressive, tend to be mishandled and have been responsible for a number of, sometimes fatal, maulings.

Okay, negativity over. The sex scenes were superb. Kitty's upside-down Mission-Impossible pole-dancing move on the rope suspended in mid-air while shooting at the ground was very cool. I liked the A-C male/female dynamic when it came to mating choices. The females were super intelligent scientists interested in high IQs who thought human men like Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates were and I quote "dreamy". They considered their male A-C stock to be morons in comparison. Physical appearance didn't matter to any of the A-Cs, perhaps because they were all 100% gorgeous.

I think this book would make an exciting movie but I'm not sure I would read the sequel unless my local library acquires it.

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LibraryThing member Spurts

Well 2 1/4 stars. Series has potential; lots of interesting elements even beyond the premise of earth girl meeting alien. PROS: any sitcom, rock group, science fiction series or movies--all there. Heroine gets kickass moments and usually outsmarts the men. Science gets explained. Arch--arch

comments, arch villains, arched eyebrows, an arch/snarky tone overall…and CONS: repeat all the preceding. All too implausible for me.

Series could get good; but, i could not get into past opening chapters I sampled that had fast paced action and vivid writing. Never really got into main character as she, like the story, really jumped around a lot and tried too hard to be too cute and too funny. Really did not work for me when it was relentlessly jumping from spoof to pseudo-science info dumps to sex scenes to religion and moralizing to heroine über perceptive when story wanted or dense when plot needed. Lengthy infodumps of attempted science in one chapter blithely refuted with another long infodump in others. Chick lit cliches like pulling in strange family dynamics worked better than the attempt to pull in the science.

Did have some chuckles and writing good overall if uneven; so, if rest of series gets a better flow could be good. If I had not been reading for a goodreads group game, I would have set aside to read in spurts between other books and probably liked better. Reading all at once was actually tiring. More suited to a set of shorter graphic novels.

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LibraryThing member ladycato

This is an outright frolic with an incredibly feisty heroine. The science fiction action is intense, especially through the last 3/4, and engaged me more than the romance initially did. With all of the worldbuilding squeezed into this book, it's no wonder that this kicked off such a long series.

LibraryThing member AwesomeAud

It's a hot day in Arizona, and Kitty is walking to her car when a domestic dispute goes very wrong. The raging man literally turns into a monster! But instead of running away like the rest of the bystanders, she grabs a pen out of her purse, and runs toward hideous thing killing everyone in sight.

After stabbing it, she is approached by the most handsome man she's ever met and whisked away in a limousine. She finds out the world is under attack by alien parasites, and that other aliens (all drop-dead gorgeous) have been trying to stop it for decades. Somehow, Kitty manages to figure out where they've been going wrong for the past fifty years, and save the day....and get the guy.

Lots and Lots of wordy explanations. Lots. Every time you turned around there was another long explanation required. In between that there was action that defied the laws of physics, and some sex. Needless to say, I won't be seeking out others in this series.

When checking the date of publication I noticed it said 'Copyright 2010 by Jeanne Cook'. I guess Gini Koch is a pen name.

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LibraryThing member MynTop

Prior to this book, the only Alien novel I can recall reading was The Host. I was a little nervous that I might not like this series because of my lack of experience in this particular area of the paranormal. I was VERY pleasantly surprised. I was drawn in from the first page and my first night of

reading I could not put the book down, to the point of staying up until 3 a.m. reading! The story is pretty much action from page one and it never dies down. You're kept on the edge of your seat and anxious to know what's going to happen next. Add to that the quirky wittiness of the main character Kitty, and a brewing romance and love triangle and you've got yourself a hit! So, if you think a battle between good and evil aliens, a love triangle, and a witty and very intelligent female protagonist sound right for you, then please read this book!

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LibraryThing member TheYodamom

I never have thought of aliens as sexy till now, Martini, is one hot green little man. LOL This book was a surprise in every way, it was fresh, original and filled with quirky characters. The mother, oh my wait till you meet her mother, what a hoot. Nothing is what it seems, poor Katt has been lied

to all her life, well to be fair most of the world has. This is a funny book, light somewhat predictable towards the end still and enjoyable ride.

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LibraryThing member SwitchKnitter

I tried to like this. But the writing style is dreadful. I couldn't make it past chapter three. It has some ridiculous inconsistencies that make it hard for me to suspend my disbelief. So I gave up. Oh well.

LibraryThing member ThothJ

fun to read; a real brain-break from the normal series history non-fiction I tend to read the most. I really did enjoy it and am starting book number 2 in the series today.

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