Pros: A fun read on a nice day, interesting plot
Cons: You can easily see the Stephanie Plum in it.
The Bottom Line: I still maintain that Josh Holloway would be the best candidate for the part of Sam Hooker.
At the time, I was still waiting on Plum Lovin’, the midway novel between books #12 and #13 in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. I spotted Metro Girl, which is outside of the series, and stood there for a moment before having one of those “Eh, why not?” moments and plucking it off the shelf.
Ok, it’s not Stephanie Plum…but it is. Here’s the rundown.
Alexandra “Barney” Barnaby is a regular gal. Average, works for an insurance company, lives in Baltimore, has a rather unexciting life just like most people. Then her brother Bill calls from Miami around 2am one night, not making much sense, then there’s a scream and he disconnects. Not exactly something a sister ever wants to hear from a sibling. She flies down only to find Bill is missing and he’s “borrowed” popular NASCAR driver Sam Hooker’s boat. Hooker figures his best chance at finding Bill and his boat is to stick with Alex – but that might be a bad choice considering now there are many unsavory characters after them because of what Bill has done. Everyone is getting a bit more than they bargained for when it comes to Bill’s actions, leading to something about Cuban gold and an extremely dangerous item that cannot fall into the wrong hands.
Let’s say for a moment you’ve never read any of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books. In that case, you’re pretty well off. Sure, the characters don’t have too much depth, surprisingly especially Alexandra even though she’s narrating the story in first person. We only get the surface info on everyone, even though Alex throws out tidbits of her life here and there, we just never seem to truly get into anyone. And, by the way, it is way too easy for some things to happen; Alex has never been to Miami before and yet it’s like she has connections everywhere. She meets two women for maybe 10 minutes and already they’re digging up information for her like they work for the CIA. Yeah, you can find anything on a computer these days, but it still bugged me a little. And then Hooker had some ridiculously impressive connections as well. Sorry, it’s just a little too easy. Not sure how you would do it otherwise, but still.
Along those same lines, some people react in ways you’ll probably think, “No one would do that.” Or if they did, it wouldn’t be in the same manner. For example, the two get threatened that if they don’t stop looking for Bill, they’ll be killed, and yet they continue like it’s no big deal. Maybe you would continue, but you’d be a whole hell of a lot more careful and paranoid, at least I’d think so. In the end it’s all about the fun of the plot and multiple characters. They’re fun as well, don’t get me wrong, the whole book is amusing to read and will entertain you until you finish it. I do like the plot though, it’s nice and different. And as usual Evanovich has the sort of dialogue that will make you chuckle out loud.
Now say you’ve read the Stephanie Plum series. You can easily see a lot of the characters translated over to this book. They’re not exactly the same, but you can see elements of them, as well as some of the similarities in the way people act and things they say. Alex sort of bumbles around like Stephanie, she hates guns like her, and uses some of the same vocab. Hooker is his own man, though he has plenty of Morelli-like elements. Rosa is Lula, Maria is Connie, Judey is Sally Sweet, and you have a semi-psychotic bad guy who does the whole reveal-my-entire-plan thing, and two guys that Alex and Hooker keep bumping into and manage to escape each time. It’s different enough that you can enjoy it for what it is, but I’m sure Stephanie Plum elements are going to pop into your brain now and then as you read along.
Despite all that, it was a pretty decent book. It isn’t going to win any awards and it’s not going to become a classic, but if you’re impatient for some Stephanie Plum-like stuff or just want something fun to read, this is your book.
NT
Originally posted on Epinions.com
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