Steph'sBookRamblings: Tricky Twenty-two by Janet Evanovich

Summary from Amazon:

Stephanie Plum might not be the world’s greatest bounty hunter, but she knows when she’s being played. Ken Globovic (aka Gobbles), hailed as the Supreme Exalted Zookeeper of the animal house known as Zeta fraternity, has been arrested for beating up the dean of students at Kiltman College. Gobbles has missed his court date and gone into hiding. People have seen him on campus, but no one will talk. Things just aren’t adding up, and Stephanie can’t shake the feeling that something funny is going on at the college—and it’s not just Zeta fraternity pranks.

As much as people love Gobbles, they hate Doug Linken. When Linken is gunned down in his backyard its good riddance, and the list of possible murder suspects is long. The only people who care about finding Linken’s killer are Trenton cop Joe Morelli, who has been assigned the case, security expert Ranger, who was hired to protect Linken, and Stephanie, who has her eye on cash prize and hopefully has some tricks up her sleeve.

My Thoughts:

Stephanie and the gang are up to some more crazy antics! While searching for her FTA’s, moonlighting for Rangeman, and dealing with a pimple, no car, and a breakup Steph starts to reevaluate her career choices…again. Everyone seems to be loving their jobs and living their dreams except for her but what other options does she have?

Let me start this off by saying that I have been a HUGE Stephanie Plum fan for years but…#21 didn’t thrill me. To be honest, the last few books in this series seemed repetitive, predictable, and there just weren’t as many laughs for me as there used to be. So to say I wasn’t hesitant about reading the next installment would be an understatement.

Yes, some things are still a bit predictable but this installment seemed a little fresher and definitely funnier than the last few books. We also get a little bit more emotion from Stephanie and it seems like more maturity as well. I would really like to see this series progress a little more in the Life Department for her as all of this back and forth between two men bit is starting to get old. I think she can settle down relationship-wise without it affecting the series.

Lula and Grandma Mazur are, of course, present and just as funny as always. And Stephanie’s mom even gets in on the action a bit! Overall, I was pretty happy with this installment and feel like maybe this series is picking back up again.

3.5/5 stars