Aladdin’s Samovar by Lauren Sweet

 

A nice, normal, boring life—that’s all Amber Polaski ever wanted. One where she’s not unchaining her flaky New Age mom from endangered trees, bailing her out of jail, or getting dragged to naked pagan rituals. But when Amber finds a sexy genie in her antique brass samovar, any hope of normal goes up in smoke.
It’s just one tiny little wish—to find her long-lost father. What could go wrong?
Plenty. Dad shows up, all right—with a computer drive full of stolen data and angry mobsters hot on his trail. Now Amber has Fugitive Dad holed up in her Manville, NJ duplex, fending off the Mafia on one side and the FBI on the other. And she has Jasper the genie lounging in her blue plush recliner, conjuring chocolate chip cookies and passing himself off as her boyfriend. While Jasper is trying to tempt Amber with more disastrous wishes—and his seriously hot thousand-year-old body—Amber and her mom are forced to fight off Mafia assassins with nothing but chutzpah and household appliances.
It’s time for Amber to call in the B-team: Iggy the homeless dwarf, Tim the ecoterrorist, and Wanda the Fairy Dogmother with her pack of Happy Puppies. Together, they need to save Dad before the Mob makes him disappear again—permanently

This book was filled to the gills with laugh-out-loud moments. The dryness and sarcasm that some of the lines were delivered with was priceless.

Amber is a great heroine, especially when she totally lost it at one point and went completely psycho when she snapped. It was great having a heroine who reacted to what was going on in such a way and didn’t just float along with what was happening.

Jason. the genie, rotated between being a right pain that I wanted to scream at him and being cute. Although he is supposed to be stunningly gorgeous I couldn’t imagine being in a relationship with him so he stays in the puppy dog/best friend category.

The supporting characters were all larger than life and really gave a kick to the story that made it even more enjoyable.

The one thing that I didn’t like was that it seemed to meander a bit in places. Like following Amber at work. This did make sense though as Ambers place of work does come into things later so having the info helped but at the time I found it a little slow.

Fun read that had me laughing, cheering and cringing for poor Amber as she tried to sort out her life and get back to the ‘normal’ before the craziness started.

 

**I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review **