Hard Eight Book

Average Rating:

Stephanie Plum fans will enjoy the book, still has the humor and the fun characters you've come to know and love.

New readers looking for mystery will enjoy the story and should appreciate the humor which is far different than any other mystery writer.

If you are looking for humor and romance with a touch of mystery in the background....read one of the other seven Stephanie Plum books first.

But I found a couple of indescrepancies in this book that made me feel the author was not paying attention to detail any longer, and was probably rushed to meet her deadline. For example - Hard Eight appears to start up about 2 months after Seven Up ended. In Hard Eight, Ranger once again has his hair back in the ponytail, however it was noted in Seven Up a few times that he had cut his hair extremely short as a disguise. Does hair grow that fast? And no further mention of Stephanie's new platinum blonde (a la Marilyn) hair . That should have at least merited a mention once her roots started growing out! And Stephanie's bathroom was still mentioned as being that awful "orange and brown", but we all knew her apartment had undergone a complete re-do after the fire in a previous book. Little things, yes, but with Ms. Evanovich having such a large group of loyal "Stephanie followers", this lack of attention to detail is quite annoying to those of us immersed in Stephanie's life. And these hardbound books are not cheap. Are double-spaced to boot, and can be read in one sitting. I'd like a little more for my money these days.

I read on Ms. Evanovich's website that her contract is good through Book #11 - let's hope that in these last 3 of the series provide some more "meat" like One for the Money - the original book that garnered so many rave reviews, and got so many of us hooked on Stephanie Plum. I could see this series continuing past #11, IF the author makes some changes in Stephanie's life (after all, she is a few years older than when she started this adventure) - maybe she could go along to capture an FTA with Ranger in the Bahamas or something, steaming up the pages a little as Ranger does "his thing" - free of interfering grandmas, the long-suffering, sometimes boyfriend Joe Morelli, and Stephanie's many "drop ins". Or maybe she goes on a vacation to "get away from it all" and ends up having a madcap adventure anyway. I don't know - something to broaden her horizons a little. If not, then I hope the author gives Stephanie a happy forever by Book #11.