Review: Explosive Eighteen

I remember my boss at Sheetz (a gas station chain, similar to WaWa, but only in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina) the summer between my junior and senior year in college loaning me One for the Money by Janet Evanovich and saying it was one of the funniest series she has ever read.  Eighteen full length novels and one movie later, I have to agree.

 

Here's the summary from Amazon:

Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she’s flying back to New Jersey solo. 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. And a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying.
  Only one other person has seen the missing photo—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 things are going from bad to worse. The bonds bus serving as Vinnie’s temporary HQ goes up in smoke. Stephanie’s wheelman, Lula, falls in love with their largest skip 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.

Ok, as always, Grandma Mazur is my favorite character.  That old lady just makes me laugh!  I was a little sad that she wasn't as featured as she normally is, but when she's there, she's got pip!  

I know its one of the driving forces of the series, but dang I wish Stephanie would just make up her mind between Joe and Ranger!  Or, (though I'd hate for this to happen) one of the guys would just say, "Choose!"  and stop being ok with her going back and forth between the two. 

Explosive Eighteen just wasn't as funny as some of the earlier books---the earlier books have been known to make me fall off the couch because I was laughing so hard.  It is a funny series, though.  But after 18 books, its hard to keep things fun and fresh.  I'm glad this wasn't the first book in the series.  I have some minor issues with it (that could be me being pissy) but overall, it was an ok book---not my favorite in the series, but not so horrible that it will keep me from reading any other books in the series.   

(I haven't seen the movie yet---I'll probably wait till it comes to Redbox.  I'm not sure how I feel about Katherine Heigl playing Stephanie---she's not my favorite actress.)