Review: Janet Evanovich – Stephanie Plum series

Stephanie Plum series
Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum is a terrible daughter, neighbour and employee. Most of these qualities are due to the fact that she’s employed as a bounty hunter for bail jumpers – but leaves her cell phone flat and her gun in the cookie jar. This lovable/hateable unlikely heroine regularly finds herself being shot at but with the help of her love interests Morelli the cop and Ranger the sexy beast, and her ex-ho friend Lula she’ll live to fight another day.

You don’t need to have read the first novel in the series. You don’t need to have read any of the series in the middle to the novel you’ve gotten your hands on! Evanovich sets the scene of Stephanie very simply at the beginning of every novel. In the past, I read Turbo Twenty-Three without having touched the novels before! I read 5 or so of these in a row before I couldn’t take anymore.

Steph is so clueless, and the jokes so stupid and the badguys so unbelievable it just makes you laugh the whole way through. The novels are set up in such a way that the reader can predict the ending but Steph is left wandering around in the dark (literally, half the time). When she got the dog, Bob, the funniest moments were when he ate too much and she took him to poop on her arch-nemesis’ front lawn. So I’m not immune to toilet humour, sue me. I can’t believe they made this into a movie! I fear for my eyeballs.

This is just like the Mercedes Thompson novels I just read! A cruisy light read that encourages your brain to switch off for vacation time. However, the plot and execution of the Mercedes Thompson series is more my style in the end (also, there is 25+ novels in that series!).

I’ll be giving three stars to this harmless crime-romance series. Just don’t read too many in a row or your brain may fall out from Steph’s sheer stupidity.

5 thoughts on “Review: Janet Evanovich – Stephanie Plum series

  1. Hi hi,
    I agree with the review. Janet is a good writer and each book is well written. I guess it would really be best not to read to many in a row, because I do start to feel stupid. Actually I think Steph is getting dumber after the first few books. I am listening to 17 currently and am getting frustrated. Where she had at least some common sense in the series beginning, she now goes into a druglords warehouse on her own, or worse with lula, looking for hints of illegal business…they do not even know what they are looking for. Kinda like hoping to stumble over a dead body or something. There is little progress after book 6 or 7.
    The patterns are always the same, and I think she has so far had death threats and messages (cruel ones) sent to her apartment in every book. In the end the real bad guy is a psycho who almost kills her.
    I think this could still work well if the rest of the book had some changes.
    Could be little things like take conny on a hunt instead of lula. Bring in a new bounty hunter, could be a partner, could be an ambitios one who challenges steph. Unfortunately everything stays the same, not to mention her love interests. I have not yet completely understood why stephanie always says she has to choose one, when Ranger says he does not want a relashionship. Sex only. Like what is she hoping for there? She has a crisis in every book about her job and her love life. So go ahead and try the affair thing with Ranger, but jeeez don’t sleep with both back and forth because it is not at all a solution to your dilemma. Like she stated about 15 books ago that both are good lovers *major eyeroll*

    • Wow! Thanks for stopping over and your comments. Almost a full review yourself! I haven’t looked any more of these since I last read them, so I guess you’re right! Some changes to the formula would help.

      ~ Rose

  2. Read to relax, unwind from stress and pain. Light reading with many continuous laugh out loud moments. Each time you laugh your blood pressure go down if high, your pain level lessens. Laughter great medicine, better than any pill. Disagree that Stephanie makes you feel dumb after reading many books. Lighten up. I read serious history, biographies & Tom Clancy plus Patricia Caldwell. I read Plum series to take me away from stress and pain. Better than a bubble bath.

    • Great to hear that you enjoy them, Trish. They were only light reading for me, and at my reading pace I can polish off something like that in an hour or two. I expect a bit more from myself to read!
      ~ Rose

  3. I think your review is brilliant. She makes no progress whatsoever in the books to the point that you have to wonder if she should be allowed to do anything without supervision and have to wonder at the number of competent people that continue to put up with her lack of intelligence. Once sentence with a very few facts and you know just how Steph is going to screw up, again, and how the whole thing is going to play out much like the contents of her shoulder bag which she will be incapable of either accessing or none of the needed items are in any shape to be used. But, hey, congratulations to Evanovich for knowing her reading public but halfway through book 5 I hope she gets shot to protect all the people who are unfortunate enough to know her and/or let her grift money off them.

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