Review-Explosive Eighteen

Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There's not much I can say about this book that I haven't already said in my past reviews of the last few books. Predictable storyline. Mystery I don't care about. Jokes that are no longer funny. I remember the first few books in this series, I was literally LOLing every few pages. Now all I do is read as fast as I can just to be done with it. I no longer care about the love triangle between Stephanie, Ranger, and Morelli. Why should I? It seems like it will never be resolved so I don't see the point in caring.

On the positive side, I do still like the Stephanie and Lula scenes, as well as dinner scenes with the family. That's about it.

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Source: Library
Challenges: Outdo Yourself Challenge, Support Your Local Library, 2012 Mystery and Suspense Challenge

Review-One for the Money (book and movie)

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Great book, one of my favorites. This is the Stephanie Plum I fell in love with, the witty dialogue, the LOL situations, the lovable bumbling idiocy of Stephanie as she figures out the bounty hunter business. It's such a refreshing change from the disappointment of the last few books in the series.

The movie, however, does no justice to the book. I should've gone with my first instincts when I heard this movie was coming out and just not bother to see it, but the closer it got to release date and the more previews I saw, the more I wanted to see it, especially after rereading the book. But I should've waited until it came on TBS or something. I'm pretty much indifferent to Katherine Heigl (liked her on Grey's Anatomy, loved her in Knocked Up, haven't paid much attention to anything since then) but she wasn't so good as Stephanie. She played her a little too overly confident for my tastes. I hated the guy who played Morelli. I'd give the movie a 2.5 out of 5. If they decide to come out with another one (and I hope they don't) I won't be seeing it.



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Source: bought
Challenges: Outdo Yourself, Mystery and Suspense, Ebook Challenge

Review-Smokin' Seventeen

Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Another typical Stephanie Plum novel. What more is there to say, they are all exactly the same at this point. I could see who the killer was a mile away. In fact, it was so obvious that I was actually surprised when that's who it turned out to be, because I was like was it supposed to be that simple to figure out?

In other news, the more I see the previews for the One for the Money movie, the more I want to see it. I'll be rereading the book beforehand, to remind myself of the days when the Stephanie Plum series was great and laugh out loud funny. Nowadays, not hardly.



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Source: Library
Challenges: Outdo Yourself, Support Your Local Library, Mystery and Suspense

Review-Visions of Sugar Plums

Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This Plum holiday novella has been on my bookshelf for a few years now and I've never gotten around to reading it. I've been pretty much over the Stephanie Plum series for awhile now, and I'm only reading the rest for completion, but I figured since this book came out awhile ago that it might have some of the same magic of the earlier Plum books.

No such luck. It opens with a man named Diesel miraculously appearing in Stephanie's living room, and unfortunately he's there throughout the rest of the book as some sort of piss-poor Ranger replacement (who is nowhere to be seen in this one.) The rest of the book includes the usual Plum antics: Stephanie's car catches on fire, Lula attacks some midgets, Grandma Mazur loses her teeth, Joe kisses Stephanie on the forehead, same old same old

A very generous three stars. It had a few enjoyable moments, but they were few and far between and I have no intentions of reading any of the other Plum holiday novellas starring Diesel.



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Challenges: 100 Books in a Year

Review-Sizzling Sixteen

Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I remember when I first started reading the Stephanie Plum books, I couldn't finish them fast enough. I'd stay up until the wee hours of the morning because I couldn't put them down. That hasn't been the case for the past 6 or 7 books, but I keep reading them in the hopes that they will go back to the glory days of books #1-9.

This was not the book. Nothing exciting happens in this book. Stephanie is no longer the funny, kick a$$ heroine that I grew to love in One for the Money. The same things happen in all the current books:

Stephanie and Joe have a domestic dispute and are on a break
Grandma Mazur wreaks havoc in a funeral home
Stephanie and Lula go for donuts and Cluck in a Bucket
Lula wears spandex
Ranger gives Stephanie a black car
Stephanie destroys car
Ranger gives Stephanie another black car
Stephanie and Joe make up at the end, only to be on a break again at the start of the next book

I'm OVER it.

Sizzling Sixteen is no exception to the same predictable formula. I no longer care about the mystery and whether or not Stephanie will find her skips. The only parts that are interesting to me is when she's at home with her family and when she's with Ranger. I used to be a diehard Stephanie/Morelli shipper but they are so boring, I've moved on to shipping Steph and Ranger. That would make these books so much more interesting, if she would dump Joe for good and move on to Ranger permanently. Or at least for awhile. Basically, they just need to do SOMETHING. I finish reading these books, and I think back "What actually happened in this book?" because it seems like nothing of importance happens anymore.

Only 3 stars for this one. I truly hope that one day we will get back the funny, fearless, sassy Stephanie I fell in love with all those books ago, and that the storylines go back to being as cute and crazy as they once were. Now the story lines are just a little too over the top and trying too hard.



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Challenges: 100 Books in a Year, Mystery and Suspense Challenge

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? (16)

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by The Book Journey.

Last week:
Last week was literally the worst week of my life (don't want to get into it now) so I didn't read anything.

This week:
This week isn't much better, but I'm currently trying to finish up Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich. I'm almost done, but it's really not interesting/funny enough to get my mind off things.

Up next:
The Night Before Thirty by Tajuana "TJ" Butler and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer.

Theme Thursday (8)

Theme Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Reading Between Pages.

1. A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
2. Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
3. Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
4. It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

This week's theme is BEAUTY RELATED

My entry comes from Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich.

The woman who answered the door was about five foot nothing. Her hair was pale blond and cut short. Her makeup reminded me of pictures of Japanese geisha. Exaggerated bow mouth painted with glossy bright-red lipstick, white pancake makeup, and pencil-thin black eyebrows. She was wearing a magenta velour warm-up suit and white tennis shoes.