(From my Goodreads) I promise that within the next few weeks I will have something new and sparkly for you but until then:

Touched by an Alien - Gini Koch

Ok, so first off based on the cover and the back description I wasn't expecting much.

I was wrong.

This book was not only surprisingly funny and fast-paced, it was semi-plausible and steamy.

I thought Kitty was going to be TSTL and that the romance was going to be by-the-numbers and blah blah blah blah I'd fall asleep in the middle. Nope. Kitty is smart, realistic, brave and flawed. A marketing manager who happens to be in the wrong place at the right time (depending on how you look at it), Katherine 'Kitty' Katt witnesses a man kill his wife but here's the kicker, he's not a man. He's a thing with wings. Using her fancy pen, she stabs it in the right place (which is not as crazy hand of the author as you'd think) and the next thing she knows all these great looking men in custom tailored suits show up out of thin air and whisk her away to a secret area.

Being that she's quick, she grasps all the information that they are part of the government and that there are things called super-beings and she's just killed one and 'hey, would you like to be recruited'? On top of that, Jeff Martini, the one who does the whisking, is already telling her he wants to marry her. Is he kidding? Kitty decides that yes, he's gorgeous but there are more important things to worry about right now. Namely, how did she get in this mess and wait, what do you mean super-beings and aliens?

As a comic-book geek (something I do happen to have in common with Kitty besides also working in marketing), Kitty can't help but make a few analogies which will help those that are fans and possibly confuse those that aren't but the point will get across because this book will dumb it down for you as the information gets disseminated by different characters.

Speaking of, we find out that the secondary characters (while not as fully-fleshed out) are very interesting in their own rights. There are some surprising secrets about Kitty's parents, Jeff & Christopher's (Jeff's surly cousin and partner who has a few surprises of his own) origins and as the plot and the mystery unrolls we get to see what these characters are made of.

While the villain is exactly that, a villain, you get the sense that though he's sort of like a typical comic book villain, it's not about him. It's about the damage he's caused and how it effects the characters and less about trying to humanize him.

Fast-paced and funny, this book borrows from several genres but in the end manages to still end up unique. It never takes itself too seriously, which is maybe why it doesn't fail. It's refreshing and a good read.