Title: Wicked Charms
Authors: Janet Evanovich and Phoef Sutton
Series: Lizzie and Diesel #3
A fun action-adventure-comedy (with a pinch of romance) that will make you laugh out loud 🙂
YAAAY AN EVANOVICH BOOK!! WHOOP WHOOP!
There was quite a long hiatus between the last book of this series and this latest installment, but it was worth the wait. Only Janet Evanovich (and whichever co-writer she’s got tagging along at the moment) can pull off something this fantastically ridiculous. Her books aren’t full of hidden meaning or saturated with detail, but that’s okay. They’re fun reads, “summer” or “beach” reads as some like to call them, mostly light-hearted and hilarious–but they can have their dark moments where all of a sudden you’re like, Whoa. This sh*t just got real.
Lizzie strongly reminds me of Stephanie Plum from Janet’s most popular series, and Diesel seems like a delicious mash-up of Ranger and Joe Morelli. I’m okay with that, because I can’t get enough of any of those characters. Glo is Lula, Clara is Connie, Cat is Rex, Carl is Bob. Hatchet could be Vinnie or Joyce Barnhardt. There are fancy cars and explosions–classic Janet. (Hey, if you’ve found a formula that works, why mess with it?) The characters aren’t one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, but they aren’t particularly deep, either. The only thoughts and emotions the reader is privy to are Lizzy’s, and those are pretty low-key unless she’s about to drown or has a gun pointed at her. Then she gets a little worked up. But for all the crazy stuff that happens, the characters’ reactions are remarkably blase. It’s fitting in the context of the book, though, which is meant to be a cartoonish, fast-paced adventure. You’re not supposed to have time to think about the logic–or lack thereof.
It’s hard to find faults with such a silly story, because if you call out one thing you’ll call out them all, tearing the whole thing apart, and then it’s spirit is just ruined. But there was one thing that really bothered me. The story structure threw me off a bit. The climax (or at least the most exciting part of the book, in my opinion) was smack dab in the middle, and after that I got a little impatient as they chased their tails and nothing really progressed. I scanned pages and skipped paragraphs. Consequentially, the real climax didn’t seem like much of a climax at all. All the necessary threads got tied up, but it wasn’t very satisfying.
And lastly, the ending. I gotta rant about it.
(I should probably explain that 90% of what I read are romantic novels, so that’s why the romantic subplot matters so much to me. I enjoy Janet’s mystery plots, but it’s her romance subplots that keep me coming back.)
Whiskey tango foxtrot! I don’t remember Wulf being romantically–well, mostly sexually–attracted to Lizzy. Maybe it was alluded to in the first two books, but they were so long ago I don’t remember. But I don’t think he’d acted on it before, and here he is, nuzzling her neck at one point and then kissing her senseless at another. I didn’t know what to think about it, my mind kind of went blank with shock. I don’t remember considering Wulf a potential beau, he seemed like just a crazy villain and sometimes grudging ally. A plot device, essentially. Then in this book he’s, like…hot. Like super sexy. Effortlessly stole his scenes. He has just a handful of scenes, a handful of lines, but I smelled smoke whenever he was on the page. I think I was just as surprised by his appeal as Lizzy was. I’m delightedly baffled.
It could have just been Wulf taking a sly swipe at Diesel in the interest of their rivalry. Or maybe Diesel just doesn’t present enough mind’s-eye candy, and they’ve decided to have more conflict on the personal front by copying the “two hot guys fighting over a woman” element from Plum. An element that pretty much drives that series, so I can understand why they’d want to incorporate it here. I just didn’t see it coming. I guess Diesel is more or less Morelli, the mostly-straight-laced “lawman” who feels he claimed her first, and Wulf will be Ranger, the super mysterious bad boy that for some reason she just can’t resist.
Because resist she did not. I was extremely frustrated with the last page. I read it over and over and over, trying to understand it better. Like I said before, Janet’s books are not weighed down with scene-setting or emotion-describing details–but there are a few moments, like THIS one, that I really, really wished she’d explain what’s going on a little bit better. Wulf shows up, claims his part of the deal or whatever–it’s not important anymore–kisses Lizzy, says when all the stones are found it’ll be THEIR time, and goes. And Lizzy just allows it all to happen. Then she turns around and there’s Diesel, the man she’s been shacking up and hooking up with, having witnessed it all, and he says something so ambiguous it pissed me off. I just–what–how–who–WTF? I wish Janet would have written what thoughts were going through Lizzy’s mind, why she just stood there and allowed Wulf to kiss her and didn’t push his crazy *ss away. I wish she’d have given more indication as to what Diesel felt about it. I couldn’t decide if he was jealous and upset or confident and nonchalant. It could have been either. Or both. Or neither.
She’s done endings like that to us a few times, and I hate it. I hate cliff-hangers! I understand how they’re useful from a business standpoint–it’ll make the reader want to know what happens next and buy her next book to find out–I’m one of those readers–but UGH! Book cliffhangers are even worse than TV show cliffhangers. Those only make you wait for either a week or through the summer. You can wait for a book for years.
All in all, I loved this book, as I love all her books, and highly recommend it to anyone.
