Plum Spooky is the fourth of the “between-the-novel” Stephanie Plum books that include Visions of Sugar Plums, Plum Lovin’, and Plum Lucky. I’ll admit that I skipped the two middle books to read (or in this case listen to) Plum Spooky as it is the holiday theme for this month.In Plum Spooky, our favorite bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum is chasing after a super smart, but socially inept skip named Munch. Munch is business partners with a very scary dude, Wulf Grimoire. The mysterious and sexy Diesel is also after Munch and Wulf and pops back into Stephanie’s life to help track down this duo.
Stephanie has plenty of supernatural problems in this book including a forest full of mysterious creatures including the Easter Bunny, the Jersey Devil, and the fire farter. She also was left a monkey companion named Carl who appears to be a lot smarter than the average monkey. Love interests Joe Morelli and Ranger also make appearances as does my favorite sidekick, Lula.
Lorelei King reads Plum Spooky and does a fantastic job of giving each character their own unique voice. Her readings of Lula’s lines were enough to make me crack up laughing a few times and to give my husband pause as he passed through and heard them.
Overall Plum Spooky was a light, fun read that made me laugh out loud a few times. I liked the “supernatural” elements of this book as it fit the Halloween theme. I liked this “between-the-novel” book a LOT better than I liked Visions of Sugar Plums. I wish I would have read the books in order though as I think Diesel appears in all of the “between-the-novel” books and I’m having a hard time remembering him from Visions of Sugar Plums. Plum Spooky also solved a question I had from the regular series, how Lula and Tank’s engagement ended.
One gripe I have is that although Diesel is a fun new flirtation for Stephanie, she already has her Stephanie-Ranger-Morelli love triangle going. It almost feels like too much going on with Diesel thrown into the mix. Diesel gets his own treatment in Evanovich’s new book, Wicked Appetite. I may have to check that out once I get caught up with the “between-the-novel” books.
I read Plum Spooky as part of the Stephanie Plum Reading Challenge. I have two books left to complete the challenge, Plum Lovin’ and Plum Lucky.
Audiobook Source: The Kewaunee Public Library
This was definitely an improvement on the first between the numbers book, but it would have to have been because that one was a turkey!
ReplyDeleteI agree. Visions of Sugar Plums is the only Plum novel I actively disliked!!!
ReplyDeleteLaura, I am not familiar with this series, but will keep it in mind for the future. Terrific review!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm never quite sure whether I want to read these or not. Maybe I should just suck it up and try one. Should I start at the beginning?
ReplyDeleteDo you mean the "in-between" novels or the Stephanie Plum series in general? I would start at the beginning of the entire series with One for the Money. I think the first few books were the best of the series, and it's kind of gotten run of the mill with the last few.
ReplyDeleteIf you mean the "in-between" novels, I would have been happy to never have read Visions of Sugar Plums, it wasn't that good. Plum Spooky was worth the read though and I still need to read the middle two.
I've never read any of the in-between Plum books but it sounds like I'll like them every bit as much as I like the series. They always make me laugh out loud. Have you heard that they're developing a movie?
ReplyDeleteI've heard about the movie and can't wait for it! I'm picking this for my book club book in January so we'll be prepped for the movie. I'm a little bit wary though of Katherine Heigl as Stephanie . . .that is not what I imagined at all!
ReplyDeleteSteph does seem to attract the hot men doesn't she?
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