Review: Alien Tango by Gini Koch

Book: Alien Tango by Gini Koch
Series or Stand-Alone: Series; Katherine "Kitty" Katt #2

Previous Books in Series: Touched by an Alien
Pages: 439
Genre: Science Fiction / Romance
Publication Date: December 7th, 2010
Description (From Goodreads): It's been five months since marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt started working with the aliens from Alpha Centauri, and she and Jeff Martini are getting closer. But when an experimental spacecraft is mysteriously returned to the Kennedy Space Center, Kitty and the rest of her team are called in to investigate. Now the team must survive murderous attacks, remove a space entity from a group of astronauts, and avoid an unhinged woman with a serious crush on Kitty's high school boyfriend. And that's all before evil masterminds decide Kitty's extermination is vital.

 I honestly don’t know where to begin. I guess, first of all, I want to mention how truly kickass the cover is. Daniel Dos Santos – you are a god. 

Now, on to the book. Just like Touched by an Alien, Alien Tango sucks you in from the first page and never lets you go. Koch injects her work with just the right balance of humor, wit, drama and excitement. Once again, Kitty is kicking alien ass and taking names. This time around her entourage of Armani clad studmuffins has expanded – shes now the Commander of the Airborne Division. This means she was fully inducted into the boys club after, what Kitty calls “Operation Fugly”.  All of the pilots from the end of book one, now report to Kitty; and let me tell you, they are just as scrumptious as the Aliens.

Kitty’s “flyboys” are extremely attached to her and they want to be involved in all of her crazy endeavors. So when craziness ensues; they quickly come running. The most memorable of the boys is Jerry; the pilot who helped Kitty land her plan in the end of the first book. He’s full of charm, but isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty when the opportunity calls.

Of course, the entire Alpha Team is back; so we see lots of Reader, Tim, Gower, Christopher and Jeff. Honestly, let’s take a moment to sit and ponder the deliciousness of these fine gentlemen…. alright. One of the things that I really enjoyed about Alien Tango is that we got to see more of Paul and Reader’s relationship. For those of you who don’t know – Reader is a former male model who is now the official driver/pilot/total badass for the A-C’s Alpha team. And Paul is the extremely awesome A-C who is dating Reader. Their relationship is completely adorable; I am pulling for a Kitty/Martini & Paul/Reader double date in the next book… because the scenes with all four of them are truly priceless.

Speaking of Martini & Kitty – once again they are pure magic. I love their banter… they are so right for each other it almost makes me sick. I love the scenes in which Kitty completely freaks out and Martini is the only one who can calm her down. There is a particularly wonderful scene that involves a killer alligator (who Kitty names Alliflash) that seems to have singled Kitty out as dinner. 

They have their fair share of ups and downs in Alien tango, mainly because Kitty’s many admirers seem to be coming out of the woodwork. We finally get to meet Chuckie, who of course is in love with her, we are also introduced to two astronauts who are rather fond of Kitty; Brian, a former high school boyfriend and Michael, Gower’s brother. This is the only part of the book that kind of annoyed me, I feel like there are already enough characters who have the hots for our heroine – we are now up to 5. 

Alien Tango is packed with the same exciting energy found in Touched by an Alien, but Kitty and the gang face a whole new host of problems and adventures. Once again there are plenty of fun airport scenes and coincidentally, marvelously awkward bathroom scenes. A great deal of the book takes place inside a NASA building, where the A-C’s are dealing with an unusually weird alien problem.  We also get to meet Jeff’s enormous family and are treated to a hilarious dinner scene in which Kitty single handily takes on the entire female portion of his family while eating her weight in dinner rolls.

I think that Alien Tango was a wonderful follow up; once again there is an abundance of wit, sarcasm, humor and adventure. The characters stay true to form – Jeff is still sarcastic, Christopher is still glaring at everyone, Reader is still the best BFF on the planet and Kitty is still.. awesome. Honestly, there isn’t a single character that I dislike in this series. They are all fabulous in their own way. Their adventures are still out-of-this-world (pun intended); there is a crazed stalker out to kill Kitty, a couple of freakishly fast alligators, a handful of different bad guys, an alien hate club, a showdown at a high school reunion, a couple of chase scenes (some with cars, some with alligators) and so much more.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of Alien Tango, or Touched by an Alien for that matter; please do. You don’t have to be a fan of science fiction to enjoy these books – they aren’t your typical alien books. They are character driven, action packed and just all around awesome.