Review #1: Turbo Twenty-Three, by Janet Evanovich

Note: Spoilers abound.

Are there really spoilers in a Stephanie Plum book, though? I mean, we know that Lula is going to wear outrageous outfits, that Grandma is going to do something wacky, that Mrs. Plum is going to drink a little bit of Four Roses in her iced tea glass, and that Stephanie is going to have some near-death experiences.

In installment 23 (are we really up to that number?), we open with Stephanie and Morelli’s relationship status upgraded to engaged to be engaged. Apparently, Joe had some sort of medical thing in the last book which made him feel especially domestic for a short while. Stephanie’s on the hunt for Larry Virgil, who is out on bond for stealing an eighteen-wheeler full of bourbon, and she and Lula catch him stealing another eighteen-wheeler, only this time, it’s full of ice cream and a dead guy covered in chocolate sauce. So, you know, a typical day in Trenton.

In the meantime, Ranger needs Stephanie to go undercover at the ice cream plant, which is sort of related to the stolen truck full of ice cream and dead guy. The B stories this time include Grandma getting engaged to a biker bartender in one of the more delightful Grandma side-stories, and Lula and Randy Briggs (the short guy) filming themselves in their birthday suits wandering about Trenton for an audition tape for “Naked and Afraid”. Think about that visual for just a few seconds.

But what you really need to know, is that Stephanie sleeps with Ranger. At the Contemporary Resort at Disney World. Twice. While wearing Tinkerbell underwear.

The last few Stephanie books have felt pretty formulaic, and they have been, but they’re still fun, and I’m still reading them. Plus, you know, Ranger. It’s hard to give him up.

Review #37: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, by Helen Fielding

Bridget Jones and I are about the same age. When I was younger, I loved her. I don't know as I wanted to be her friend because she was a bit exasperating, but I loved her. I got her. I got the Daniel Cleaver thing. I got the Mark Darcy thing. It was like she understood every bit of angst there was at that time in my life.

Bridget has grown up, and so (allegedly) have I, and I still love her. Why? Because she still understands every bit of angst that there is my life. It's different angst, sure, but it's still there. Instead of worrying about how to catch Daniel's attention or whether she can risk wearing her giant granny panties on a date, she's worried about nits and her kids' grades and her job performance and where she left her glasses and how on Earth she's supposed to be responsible for the little people in her house when, quite frankly, it's difficult to remember to put on clean underwear some days. And I get that. I so get that. 

Bridget is single now, a widow actually. In a move that angered quite a lot of fans, so I don't think I'm spoiling anything here, Fielding killed off Mark Darcy. In true Mark Darcy fashion though, he died while in Darfur, helping the fight for human rights, because he's Mark Darcy and he's kind of amazing. The novel opens with Bridget just a couple of years past the accident that killed Mark, and she's a bit of a mess. She can't quite get the kids out the door in time for school, she's not nearly as put together as the other mums at school, and all of her cereal is stale. She certainly doesn't make the taste free organic, sugar free, gluten free, healthy cupcakes for the bake sale the way the other mums do. Some readers may find that it's tough to feel bad for Bridget; after all, Mark's life insurance money certainly helps and she has a part time nanny. But parenthood - in all its shapes and sizes - is a challenge, and even though I'm doing it without the nanny or the life insurance money, I wholeheartedly identified with Bridget and her feelings of inadequacy, of differentness. Who among us hasn't stood around at a school function wondering what on Earth we were doing there, and hoping against hope that none of the other parents recognized what a completely incompetent nincompoop we were?

The story traces some of Bridget's mad-cap adventures: she starts tweeting (and is a hot mess at it, which is one of the reasons I don't tweet. I kind of don't really understand Twitter), she signs up for some online dating services, and has a wild affair with a much, much younger man. But it's not the adventures, or the tweets, or the pretty decent sex she has with the younger man that's the point of the novel. It's Bridget learning how to be Bridget again. Actually, I think it's Bridget learning how to be okay with herself. It's her accepting that she's never going to be the mum who makes the organic cupcakes for the bake sale and understanding that that's perfectly okay. She loves her children and tries to do her best by them, and that's what makes a good parent, not whether she's prepared a from-scratch, all organic meal for the annual school picnic. It's her realizing that although she loves Mark with all her heart and always will, she also has room for more love. And it, a little bit, is her letting go of Mark, of realizing that she's still alive, that her children need her, and that life, as they say, must go on.

The other characters are a good balance to Bridget and her neuroses. Her older son is quiet and serious, although there are definite glimpses of a young mischievous boy.  In many ways, he's a lot like Mark, which is both heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time. Her younger daughter is sweet and funny, the perfect comic relief to the sometimes heavy moments that steal in to the book unexpectedly. Bridget's mom is still hanging around, although her dad died some years ago. (I admit I cried at at that.) Bridget makes friends with the mum across the street, who, to Bridget's surprise, is every bit as unprepared for motherhood as she is. There are others, too - the young man Bridget begins dating, the music teacher at the school, some of Bridget's friends make an appearance or four. But the character that won me over, in the end, was that old rake, Daniel Cleaver. In the years since Mark died, Daniel has become a true friend to Bridget, and it was lovely to see him supporting her in a completely non-lecherous way. Don't worry, though. He still has his faults, and I'm not so sure I'd let him babysit, but it's obvious that he takes his role as Uncle Daniel quite seriously.

Life might not have turned out quite like Bridget thought it would - and really, does it turn out that way for any of us? - but she's doing the best she can. And in the end, that's all any of us can do. 

Reviews #20 - 23: The Stephanie Plum novels, by Janet Evanovich

I sort of gave up on Stephanie Plum a few books ago. I think I was in the middle of something else when the latest book came out and Mom had to get her copy back to the library before I could read it, and besides, Mom said it was kind of "meh", so I just never really pursued it. But recently Mom read the latest installment and said Janet's got her groove back, so while I'm waiting for the digital copy to become available, I'm catching up on the last few audio-style.  (By the way, audio's the way to go with these. The voice actress is great, and it's not like Stephanie is high literature, so if I zone out while I'm driving, I'm probably not missing much.) So here's a quick run down of the last few peeks we've had in to Stephanie's wacky life.

Explosive Eighteen opens with Stephanie coming back from Hawaii - solo - leaving both Morelli and Ranger behind in paradise. She doesn't want to talk about what happened, not even when it turns out that her seatmate never made it on the plane because he was stuffed in to a garbage can in the airport in California. Which wouldn't be a big deal, really, except that somehow she wound up with a photo that the dead guy stuffed in her messenger bag, and now everyone - the FBI, the fake FBI, the dead guy's wacky girlfriend, and a host of other weirdos - is after her.

In the meantime, the bail bonds office is working out of a temporary space that's infested with rats (I'll admit, I fast forwarded through the scene with the rats falling out of the ceiling. I just couldn't. ICK.), Lula has the hots for a big dummy that Stephanie has on her skip list, and Joyce Barnhart (remember her?) is crashing at Stephanie's. 

Morelli and Ranger make appearances, of course. Not a lot of sexy times with either of them in this installment - Stephanie's off men because of the Hawaii Incident - but there are enough hungry looks from Morelli and "Babe"s uttered from Ranger to make me happy.

Notorious Nineteen has Stephanie hot on the trail of Geoffrey Cubbin, the accountant at Trenton's ritziest assisted living facility. Cubbin's on trial for embezzling millions when he disappears from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy. Because Stephanie doesn't quite fit in with the over-80 crowd, she recruits Grandma to go in undercover, and Stephanie, still on a break from men after the disastrous Hawaii trip, is thrown together with Morelli on the hospital side of things, along with three foot tall Randy Briggs, one of Stephanie's long time nemeses. 

Also happening: Stephanie's been assigned to guard Ranger, for which she gets paid. Ranger, if you're reading this, I could probably guard you just as well as Stephanie and I would do it for free. Call me. Anyway, Ranger and his buddy are in the middle of being stalked by a former special forces friend, and so Stephanie is tapped to help do security at the wedding, which means a hideous pink taffeta dress. Although it also means Ranger in a tux, so, you know.

I think that might be all we need to know about this book: Ranger wears a tux.

But the tux doesn't sway Stephanie enough; at the end, she's kind of still off men but back, sort of kind of, with Morelli and Bob. Cubbin's been found, or rather, his money's been found and (mostly) returned to the ALF, the wedding gets cancelled in favor of elopement, and Ranger returns to his lair, so all's well that ends well.

Takedown Twenty starts out with a giraffe running through the streets of Trenton. I know that Janet says weird things happen in Trenton, and I believe her, but a giraffe is weird, even for Stephanie Plum. There's a few dead guys, a hit and run, and Stephanie is out looking for Morelli's godfather Uncle Sunny, who happens to be an actual godfather as well. Uncle Sunny's friends aren't talking, and neither is his bimbo girlfriend. Grandma Bella gets in on the action, going around town and giving people - including Stephanie - the eye. 

Grandma Mazur shows up too, helping Stephanie and Ranger work the case of the death of the mother of one of Ranger's clients, and Stephanie winds up at the bingo hall with Grandma, Bella, and Ranger, looking for the murderer.

And still, the giraffe roams the streets.

In Top Secret Twenty One, Stephanie's on the hunt for Jimmy Poletti, New Jersey's favorite used car dealer. (Aside: we have a guy in my hometown who is from that area. His commercials are obnoxious. He talks over his female cohort, named Caroline. The hashtag #WheresCaroline was trending for awhile in town when she was replaced for a few weeks by a pair of sultry Latin women who didn't speak. Caroline came back, though, and he still talks over her. And he always ends the commercial with, "It's gonna be HUGE," except he says it YOOOOOOOOGE. I can't stand him. All this to say, I think he'd fit right in with Trenton.)

Anyway, that was a weird digression in to local commercials. 

Stephanie's after Poletti, and Poletti's after little Randy Briggs, who is hiding out in Stephanie's apartment, which of course, gets blown up. I wonder if Stephanie has rental insurance. Morellia's around again, with Bob, Lula winds up with a pack of wild Chihuahuas that she and Stephanie found on Stark Street, and perhaps most important of all, someone is after Ranger, so he turns to Stephanie for help.

I have to interject here for a second and say that Ranger is a brilliant man, but I think sometimes he may place a little bit more faith in Stephanie than she deserves. I mean, if I had to pick someone to help guard me, I'm not so sure it would be Stephanie. She and Lula are fun and all, but if someone was really trying to kill me, I'm not so sure they would be the ones I'd turn to.

I need more Ranger. More Morelli's okay, too. I mean, the way he looks at Stephanie and calls her "cupcake" is pretty shiver-inducing. But Ranger's "Babe"? Swoon. No wonder Stephanie can't decide.