Smokin' Seventeen (again) by Janet Evanovich

          I’ve finished listening to Smokin’ Seventeen.  It was the jolly romp I expected.  Some of the antics that Stephanie and Lula got themselves into were laugh-out-loud funny.  Some of the situations were quite comedic. And I will never look at chickens quite the same again.

          However, overall I was just a little disappointed.  The story was a bit formulaic and no sooner did it become apparent there were multiple deaths to be solved, I determined who the killer must have been.  It was a little like the red shirted crew member on Star Trek.  The unknown actor in the big scene is gonna bite it. 

          The other thing that I discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, is that Stephanie having sex with Ranger is not nearly as titillating as Stephanie not having sex with Ranger.  It was just a tad anticlimactic – for me, not for Stephanie…

          So, while I recommend this one, it will not go on my list of favorites, not even Evanovich favorites.  But it is still quite entertaining and worth the read.

 Silver Girl:

          And as a side note, I’ve run into a book that I had to reject after the requisite three chapters: Silver Girl by Elin Hilderbrand.  Its premise was based on fictionalizing the Madoff scandal.  The main character being the wife of the bad guy trying to cope with life after the Ponzi scheme collapsed.  I could not get into it, and while I felt badly for the woman, I wasn’t even remotely interested in hearing the rest of the story.