That Summer Evanovich Fix!

June means Janet these past few years. Or Stephanie. That's actually about to change, though. Mrs. E. has moved her Plum books to a new publisher beginning with the latest release, Smokin' Seventeen, and it looks like they have plans to release Explosive Eighteen in November. Having now read three of the Plum installments in the past month, I think the downtime might be what I need to gear up for another Plum adventure.

I'm not kidding. I love Janet Evanovich. Stephanie, Morelli, Lula, Ranger, Grandma Mazur -- the whole crew and their hijinks make for some of the most entertaining reading out there. The problem is that if you read them too close together, you start to notice there's not much going on.

In Smokin' Seventeen, Stephanie has a new stalker or two -- someone is leaving bodies behind on Vinnie's lot bearing the note, "For Stephanie." And her mother has decided that it's time for the clumsy bounty hunter to settle down, inviting the newly returned to the 'Burg Dave to dinner and more in hopes that he'll woo her daughter. But Stephanie still can't pick between Morelli and Ranger -- and certainly doesn't need a new man in the mix.

The plots are always fun, if not terrible complicated, but spending some time away from E can only make the heart grow fonder! They've become (and maybe they were always that way), one-sitting reads with growing margins and fonts the size of a pick up truck. And while I'm not tired of the exploding or demolished vehicles in Stephanie's wake, I would go ahead and pick Morelli and move on with that part of the plot. Still and all, I look forward to each new installment and seeing what Stephanie is up to next.