Turbo Twenty-Three
Janet Evanovich
Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter and flybynight private investigator. After a HR officer turns up frozen solid, coated with chocolate and nuts, Stephanie has her work cut out for her to try and track down some criminals and not eat all the icecream on the way there.
Ok, so Stephanie is pretty dumb. And her friends are even dumber (except that sexy beast of Ranger). They are all caracatures of American cliches with an equally cliched environment. Seriously? Filming naked in the streets is pretty easy to get away with… and so is naked bungie jumping.
For being the ‘Newest Stephanie Plum’ novel, in a series of 23!! … Oh. I was saying that I had no idea what the significance of this title is. Now I do. Do I care? Hmm, not sure I do. The vibrant green and purple of the cover and the peppy blurb got me excited for the novel and didn’t give too much away.
I’m not sure I could read the whole series of these. It’s filled with lighthearted humour and unbelievable escapades and was indeed difficult to put down. But there wasn’t any substance that made me reach for more, and there was no need to read any of the others to enjoy it.
I’m going to be generous and give it 4 stars. It’s not a reread, but it was so funny and irreverant that I couldn’t help laughing out loud in places. I’d lend it to a friend who needed a pick-me-up.
Hachette | 15th November 2016 | AU $29.99 | Paperback
After loving former.ly by Cobain, I was hoping for another fantastic first person forey into a world where physics might have created Angels that are anything but! Sadly, this novel did not meet my expectations.
In the tradition of ‘The Day My Bum Went Psycho’ and ‘The Adventures of Captain Underpants’, this novel contains bums, snot and disgusting boys! If you have a reader that is into that kind of thing, they are going to love this novel.
The novel’s characters didn’t fill out for me. I remember Sean’s name. That’s it. I had to recheck the blurb to remember the other characters, even the ‘main’ character, Cole.
This book had me hooked, right up until the last three chapters. I couldn’t fathom what might happen next, but it wasn’t what eventually came out as the truth! For me, the truth didn’t hold through what had happened in the rest of the book, despite the hints that would have supported this outcome.
I spent a lot of the novel being confused by who was who and which sides people were on. I seriously needed a character list to keep things straight, and I kept flicking back to the Prologue in the hopes I would be able to work out who the ‘bad guys’ were.
Austin thinks that smoking weed is a good idea. He smokes cigarettes, which basically makes him drop out as any sort of good character for a teenager to read. And he never turns up to things on time. And he is making out with every girl he can get his hands on. And yet, he’s not the cool kid or the jock. He’s just an idiot that I was irritated by the whole novel. Even his ‘true-ness’ to Josey is a fake.
I really liked the nifty symbols and I think the author had a lot of fun coming up with them. It likely took a bit of research on his behalf, and it shows nicely. I’m loving the Signmaker and I think lots of teenage readers are going to be able to get into this novel.
I found myself confused by the swaps in perspective between chapters, because I was most interested in Gwin’s story. As I continued reading, I realised why it was done this way, and it eventually all settled into place. If I hazard a guess, this seems to have been a plot driven story, but it was over too quickly even almost for me to form an opinion.
This is a more gritty version of