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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Explosive Eighteen (Stephanie Plum, #18) by Janet Evanovich

Explosive Eighteen (Stephanie Plum, #18)


Summary:
Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum’s life is set to blow sky high when international murder hits dangerously close to home, in this dynamite novel by Janet Evanovich.

Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 from Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, she’s flying back to New Jersey solo, and someone who sounds like Sasquatch is snoring in row 22. Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover. Now he’s dead, in a garbage can, waiting for curbside pickup. His killer could be anyone. The FBI, the fake FBI, and guns-for-hire are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying.


Only one other person has seen the missing photograph—Stephanie Plum. Now she’s the target, and she doesn’t intend to end up in a garbage can. With the help of an FBI sketch artist Stephanie re-creates the person in the photo. Unfortunately the first sketch turns out to look like Tom Cruise, and the second sketch like Ashton Kutcher. Until Stephanie can improve her descriptive skills, she’ll need to watch her back.


Over at the Bail Bonds Agency it’s business as usual—until the bonds bus serving as Vinnie’s temporary HQ goes up in smoke, Stephanie’s wheelman, Lula, falls in love with their “largest” FTA yet, lifetime arch nemesis Joyce Barnhardt moves into Stephanie’s apartment, and everyone wants to know what happened in Hawaii?!

Morelli, Trenton’s hottest cop, isn’t talking about Hawaii. Ranger, the man of mystery, isn’t talking about Hawaii. And all Stephanie is willing to say about her Hawaiian vacation is . . . It’s complicated.
Summary taken from Goodreads.com
Length: 305 pages (Hardcover Edition)
Publication Date: November 22nd 2011

As soon as I finished Smokin' Seventeen I immediately grabbed this one and began reading it and by the next night I was finished. It was that damn good.

I'd heard a lot of mixed reviews on this one before I read it so I was initially very wary of it despite the fact that I've read the rest of the series and loved them, and I loved this one too. At the same time  can sort of see why people didn't like it as much as other books in the series.

At first I was pretty baffled by the whole summary but once I started reading the book I began to piece things together, and  really enjoyed how it turned out in the end even though Evanovich didn't really reveal the surprise until it was closer to the end of the book, but I think it worked well.

Stephanie's antics were even more hilarious in this one and of course Lula, decides to get herself into a bit of mischief as well and Mooner makes another appearance (I love Mooner) and Connie is in this one a bit more too which was amusing. I really enjoyed the way this one played out because Evanovich seemed to me at least to take her time with this one and the fact that what happened in Hawaii wasn't made clear until later on added to the book for me.

My one and only issue is that I have to wait forever to read the next Stephanie Plum book to be written and published and who knows when that will happen. On the brighter side I still have to read the between the numbers books and Evanovich is releasing Wicked Business soon so that should in theory help tide me over. All in all I'm pleased with how the series has left off at this point.


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★ ★ ★ ★ ★

4 comments:

  1. I love your one and only complaint! I really need to read this series..it sounds like something i would love! Smashing review.

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  2. I just got this one the other day but haven't gotten to reading it yet. I'm a Mooner fan too :)

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  3. I stopped reading this series a long time ago. I liked it, but just fell so far behind. I am glad to see that it is still going strong. I really should pick it back up. Thanks for the great review.

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  4. As usual, Stephanie finds herself in the middle of a big mess with little to no understanding of why. She has lots of bad dudes, good dudes, bad dudes posing as good dudes and the like chasing her around Trenton. She and Lula go after some interesting FTA's which leads to more confusion and trouble for Stephanie. Joyce Barnhart makes a significant appearance and continues to be a major fly in the ointment. A good part of this story we have seen before in other incarnations but it still works.

    I have to admit I did not have any laugh out loud moments but I did find the suspense level was kicked up a bit to compensate. The never ending question of Ranger vs Morelli continues but I think there are some definite leanings in this book. Ms. Evanovich is not completely back to the hilarious early books but this one is an improvement on the lackluster numbers 14-16 books.

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