Fearless Fourteen and Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich

[lightreads]

Latest Stephanie Plum book and one of those money-grubbing attempts to capitalize on the paranormal romance kick "between the numbers" novellas that don't have canon weight.

Fourteen is exactly what you think it is – I laughed so hard I nearly made myself backfire at least once, it went by in about three hours, Stephanie never makes any noticeable progress in this whole love-triangle life decisions thing, and the single strand of real interpersonal complication tossed out in the beginning gets all but retconed by a sentence on the last page.

My ratio of delight to exasperation has been tilting bit by bit with each additional book, and I think it will continue to do so as long as we're in this endless holding pattern. It's still pretty comfortably balanced, but that won't last forever.

Comments

[indiefic.livejournal.com]

I read book 10 in the Stephanie Plum series last week (the Red Devil, Slayer gang one) and I have to admit that for the bulk of the book, I was so damn irritated with all the Stephanie-isms. I was ready to stop reading the series. Then I read the end and I do not remember the last time I laughed that hard. It totally made up for all the irritations.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the baby words for sexual organs thing is so amazingly annoying, I really can't describe. Probably don't have to, actually.

[readerjane]

I've hit the tipping point. This will be the first Plum book I do not buy. For me, all the laughs fell flat in this one, and there wasn't enough of anything else to make it worth the while.

And I was absolutely appalled at the lobotomizing of Ellen Plum. This is the woman who ran her Buick over a man who was trying to kidnap her daughter, and now all she can do is drink herself unconscious? Feh. I'm switching to Patricia Briggs.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

That's a shame.

My big OMGWTF moment of the book was where Joe tells Stephanie how much better their lives would have been if he'd knocked her up when she was sixteen. UM WHAT?!