Explosive Eighteen

As I listened to "Explosive Eighteen" I found myself torn between laughing at Stephanie's antics and groaning at the strain of having to suspend disbelief so hard it hurt.

I had fun. How can you listen to Lorelei King read this all-you-can-eat buffet of chaos and disaster and not have fun? But I was also a little frustrated.

I decided to vent my frustration by writing an open letter to Stephanie Plum. I hope it gets my point across. I certainly made me feel better for having written it. Here it is::

Dear Stephanie Plum,

I've just read your adventures in "Explosive Eighteen", which was a hoot, but which left me needing to say a few things to you as a friend. I mean, I know we've never met, but if we had met and we were friends, these are the show more things I'd wanna say.

Firstly: grow up already. You started out as a Bounty Hunter in 1994. You were young, broke and incompetent, regularly crashed vehicles or blew them up and spent your time being wooed and or rescued by two hot men. It was all very cute and we loved you for it. By "Explosive Eighteen" you've been on the job for seventeen years and you're still broke and incompetent, but you're not so young anymore. What was once cute is starting to look like arrested development. I'm just saying.

And the Team Ranger and Team Morrelli thing is getting old faster than you are. Choose one already. And we all know it's not going to be Ranger so either put a ring on Morelli or move on.

Also, have you noticed how violent you've become? In this book alone you take on three different sets of armed men, one quite crazed and carrying a very big knife and a semi-automatic and another carrying a frikkin rocket launcher and you kick em, slice em, shock em and shoot em. Even for a girl from the Burg, that's extreme. So how come you still can't cuff an unarmed skip?

While you're thinking about that, I got one more thing I gotta know.

What's the secret with your hamster? I've never known a hamster live more than three years yet seventeen years later, yours is still living in the Campbells soup can on a diet of pop-tart crumbs. Now I'm a positive person, so I'd like to believe that you've found some exlixir of eternal hamster youth but that don't seem likely, so I gotta ask, when you leave your hamster at your mom's, are you sure you're always getting the same hamster back? I mean, you gotta wonder, don't ya?. show less

Another quirky Stephanie Plum adventure. It had me frustrated at first because I just wanted to know what had happened in Hawaii! Then it had me feeling so sad for Stephanie. She really is a screw-up. She feels terrible about being in love with two guys, but how can she possibly choose between them? I think she feels like it's finally time for her to grow up, which makes me think she's leaning toward Morelli. I liked how Morelli seemed to finally be seriously bothered by the whole Ranger situation. I wish Ranger was the same way about Joe. Lula was hilarious as always. I think my favorite part of the book was a scene where Stephanie watches (with The FBI agents) the security tape of her fight with "Razzle Dazzle." Soooo funny and show more totally awesome! It's stuff like that that makes me LOVE this series! show less

When I first heard that we were getting another Plum novel right on the heels of Smokin' Seventeen I was a little perplexed. We get one Plum book a year right? THAT IS THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS. So why is Janet throwing a curve ball and giving us Explosive Eighteen a few short months later? When we left Stephanie in June she was boarding a plan for Hawaii and she knew exactly who she was going to take with her. Did she take Joe? Did she take Ranger? So maybe we're getting Eighteen so soon afterwards because SOMETHING HAPPENED IN HAWAII!

Wrong. I don't know what their reason was for pushing Eighteen so soon after the last one but it wasn't to showcase what happened in Hawaii. It wasn't so that Stephanie could finally choose between Joe or show more Ranger. It wasn't so that after 17 books of her screwing both of them she could finally commit to only screwing one of them. It wasn't to finally show Stephanie as adept at her job. It was published so soon so that:

Something could get blown up.
Someone could break into Stephanie's apartment
Stephanie could take Grandma Mazur to a viewing at the funeral home.
Stephanie's parents could hang their heads in shame and embarrassment at the dinner table and Stephanie could brown bag leftovers.
Stephanie and Lula could eat at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.
Stephanie and Lula could make several unsuccessful attempts to capture a skip and be thwarted over and over again in the most humiliating ways.
Stephanie could toss Rex a few hamster crunchies and have him scurry out, shove them in his cheeks and go back into his soup can.
Stephanie can shamelessly sleep with both Joe AND Ranger all the while saying that she's not going to sleep with either of them.

You know, the same thing that happened in Seventeen....and Sixteen...and Fifteen....and Fourteen...shall I keep going or do you get the picture? Here's what happened in Eighteen: NOTHING. NOTHING NEW HAPPENED. No decisions were made, no changes in plot line or formatting, it was just copy/paste the last seventeen books and changing the type of excrement that Stephanie gets covered in. She doesn't "pick" anyone and the ending was left just as ambiguous as it has been for 17 books. I could possibly, if I wanted to, draw some inkling that a point was scored for Team "_____" but it would be mostly wishful thinking.

Where Sizzlin' Seventeen was hysterically funny to the point of convulsions, Eighteen was dry, dry. I actually marked the three (only three) pages that made me laugh, and only one of those was loud enough to draw attention- of course that one came from Grandma Mazur.

Janet Evanovich, author of eighteen Stephanie Plum novels who I still love with all my heart but currently want to throw things at- you make bunnies cry. show less

A few years ago, I bought a ridiculous number of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books at a library sale. (It was one of those big-bag-of-books-for-five-bucks deals, and I went a little nuts.) This one, finally, is the last of them. Not the last one to be published, by any means, but the last one I owned. And I am glad to finished with them. Honestly, the only reason I kept reading through this series this long was out of some sort of stubborn completism. Well, that, and the fact that if I needed something to read when my brain was completely fried after a week of night shifts, they were incredibly undemanding and easy. But by this point, mostly just the stubborn completism. They started out as good, dumb fun, gradually became less fun show more and more dumb, and finally degraded all the way down to boring. After eighteen-plus of these novels, it's hard to blame Evanovich for running of out ways to make the formula these novels inevitably follow interesting or entertaining, and, I think, equally hard to blame me for being tired of the formula itself. Either way, I'm done with them now.

Having finally finished with them, I was hoping for some feeling of accomplishment or relief, or maybe even of going out on an interesting note (even if it might have been interesting in a bad way). But there's not really much of any of that. This book was on my TBR shelves, and now it's going onto my read shelves, and whatever happened in-between those two things was entirely forgettable. Not especially good, not notably bad, just forgettable. show less

Book on CD performed by Lorelei King

Ah, Stephanie Plum. So, this starts with a bang as Stephanie is on a plane coming BACK from Hawaii, alone. Grandma Mazur notices she has a tan line on her left ring finger and wants to know about the wedding. For that matter, so do Lula, Connie, and just about everyone else. Don’t expect ME to tell you…

The main plot focuses on a mysterious photograph Stephanie found in her messenger bag as she unpacked. She knows she didn’t put it in there. There is no identification on it and she figures she accidentally picked it up when she bought a magazine in the airport. So, she tosses it in the garbage. Then two guys who say they are FBI agents appear at her door asking for the photograph. And then two show more more guys also claiming to be FBI agents ask about the photo. And a crazy man accosts her with a knife, also wanting the photo. And a woman claiming to be engaged to the man who took the photo also wants it. What’s so special about this photo?

There are the usual stops at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, the usual “problems” with Stephanie’s car(s), the usual skips who refuse to be captured, the usual viewing at the funeral home and the usual push/pull between Stephanie, Morelli and Ranger. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve read one of these, and I’m sure that’s why I found it so entertaining.

Lorelei King does a great job performing the audiobook. She has a gift for voices, and I particularly enjoyed how she voiced Lula, Connie, Ranger and Grandma Mazure. show less

I came to Explosive Eighteen fully expecting a resolution to Stephanie Plum's ongoing love triangle -- well, at least, lust triangle -- between copper Joe Morelli and security expert Ranger. Soon enough into the novel, it became clear that the vacation to Hawaii had gone south (no pun intended) and that Stephanie was no nearer to a resolution than she has been for the last dozen or so books.

So I was really ready to hate this novel; however, somehow I just couldn't. The Joyce Barnhart-diamond merchant mystery was better than some of the recent ones. (Remember the horrible Eleven on Top? Shudder! Me too! My husband quit on the series two or three books ago.) While Lula was a bit too outrageous and the love potion subplot was just silly, show more the end of the novel gave me some hope that Stephanie would make the right decision in the inevitable next novel. Sigh! Hope springs eternal!

I wouldn't skip a preferred writer to read Explosive Eighteen. For example, Janet Evanovich was never a Laurie R. King or a Gladys Mitchell or even a Linda Richards. However, Explosive Eighteen is a fast read and, even though it's pretty clear that Janet Evanovich is phoning in her books lately, it's better than some of her more recent ones. It's too bad; when Evanovich still cared about her work, she could write pretty fun-filled books. Now her books are just fillers when you're between books by more conscientious authors. Despite the shortcomings, when you're looking for some mindless fluff, especially if you're listening to an audio version while doing chores, Explosive Eighteen still fits the bill. show less

Hi. My name is Carol and I'm a bookoholic.

I've been reading ever since I can remember, but Goodreads seems to be contributing to my disease. I can't control myself. I'm always adding books to my "to-read" list, which is so long that if I stopped adding books today, I'd still have three years of books on it. Then there is the library, where a drive-by is part of my routine. It's on the way home from work, so it is really unavoidable. If I only make a quick stop to pick up a monthly read, that isn't a problem, is it? However, last time I was there I found this little number by Evanovich. I swore off the Stephanie Plum books a few numbers ago, but this one... it was on the New 14-Day Shelf. Why, that's free, not even a rental. How could I show more pass that up?



After I finished, I felt a little dirty and rather regretful. This was a cheap drink bolted down, perfectly serviceable but lacking any soul. There are so many better books to be spending time with--why do I do this to myself?

If you read any book between 8 and 17, you've read this book. No drag queens, but there is Joyce Barnhardt on the run, various oddball bondees getting the best of Steph and Lulu, Steph and Lulu ineptly breaking into a house, a bus blowing up, mom drinking, dad grunting, discussion of Lulu's clothes and eating habits, Grandma Mzur at a funeral, Connie running the business, Vinnie, car escapades, a '53 Buick, Ranger in black, Morelli in boxers, Rex and periodic attempts at kidnapping.

However, it did make me laugh out loud twice. Granted, I was likely delirious after swimming two miles, but I did laugh at a henchman's frustrating interactions with Steph and Lulu (specifically, his inept English cursing for some reason, "Bitching bitches" just cracked me up), and an incident with rats (which kind of echoed her incident with a spider and various geese). There was also a semi-interesting plot device of referring to a significant incident that took place in Hawaii, where Steph was headed at the end of book #17. Naturally, everyone's curious what happened, but it takes a few days to find out.

Of course, the usual complaints apply to this book: no forward character motion. Stereotypes that border on the ludicrous. I knew that going in, but with the two or three year break, they were less annoying than they would have been.

Rounding up to two inept stars.

Cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/explosive-eighteen-by-janet-evanovich-... show less