December 05, 2012

Janet Evanovich: Visions of Sugar Plums

My mom and I are both fans of the Stephanie Plum novels. She would buy them through the book club and pass them on to me (until I bought her a Kindle, and now I have to buy my own copies). We have read every major novel (the ones with numbers) and we eagerly dove into the shorter, Christmas-themed Visions of Sugar Plums.

The realism of the characters is one of the series charms. Stephanie is, in short, a bit of a mess up. She gets her man through connections, perseverience, and a big helping of luck, mostly luck. She gets kidnapped, attacked, and shot in the course of the books. Often she rescues herself, not because of her cool head and superhuman skills, but despite her snot-nosed, teary panic and inability to throw a punch. No life of ease and martinis for our herioine, she's barely making rent most months.

Clearly the books are unrealistic; no one has quite as many disasters as Stephanie, but the characters are real or close to it: the badly-trained dog, the perfect sister, the creepy boss. In Visions, Janet Evanovich has to throw in a sexy angel named Diesel.

No, really, the mysterious stranger is an angel.

Plus, he's another complication for the already-overly complicated romance between Stefanie and bad-boy-turned-good-cop Joe Morelli — or was it the overly romantic complication of mercenary-turned-security-specialist Ranger Manoso. It's a bit too typical romance novel. I like a bit more delineation between my genres.