On wintery storm days, lazy summer days, or on sick days, the Janet Evanovich - Stephanie Plum novels cheer me up. They don’t take a lot of mental energy, reading the stories is strictly for enjoyment and laughter. I don’t need to think too much, and if my mind wanders and I miss a few paragraphs, that’s ok, I can keep going and get to the next chuckle.
Why do I read books? For entertainment or for education? In most cases, I’d answer a bit of both. In the case of Janet Evanovich, it is purely for entertainment. Yet, as a budding writer, I also wonder, how does she do it? What makes her books so great that I come back to them repeatedly? She is a master of tropes and genre beats.
Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series starts with “One for the Money” and each book is numbered in the title to “Dirty Thirty” - and I have re-read each of the books well into the Twenties. I filtered through the ones that got a bit too much (too scary, too creepy, too unlikeable) and have a handful of favorites (within the Book Ten to Book Twenty range of the series) that I know will keep me company while I am drained and need a good laugh.
One technique that I notice when I read so many on a binge, is that Janet Evanovich has perfected the characters’ descriptions, with a few physical traits that she repeats in re-usable phrases in each book. If I were to do more serious analysis, I’d bet that going through each of the books, the key phrases are actually exactly the same, and in essence Evanovich is using minimal information to convey the character - for Stephanie Plum, for Lula, and for Grandma! And of course, Morelli and Ranger. How Stephanie responds to each of these relationships is repeated in each book, and we, the readers, love it. We get it, we have enough to shape the character in our minds and we run with it from there.
Stephanie Plum is good looking, but humble about it - in my mind, she is a combination of Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, Gina Rodriquez in Not Dead Yet, and myself in my early thirties.
Love interests, Morelli and Ranger are hot men, desired by other women, yet she is ambiguous. The inner dialogue that Stephanie conveys as she worries about the Morelli and Ranger questions of relationships and sex, draws the reader in. She is most likable when she is working with the men, doing her job, catching the bad guys. It is a bonus wow! when Stephanie gets a romantic moment. It’s just the right blend of flirty playfulness to make the reader laugh and feel good.
The action packed, clumsy fumbles set the pace. The ongoing question of who will she pick, Morelli or Ranger, keeps the reader involved - I know who I would pick - but of course, she cannot pick, it would end the story! The hilarious antics of Lula, Grandmother and the other secondary characters that pop up in each of Stephanie’s bounty hunter cases keeps the pages turning. I’m continually amazed at the imagination (or research or real life inspired) that creates these characters and their situations.
I’ve paid almost $300 for Evanovich books over the years and it is so worth it! I notice other authors I have invested similar amounts for as I scan my bookshelves full of the romance/adventure genre, where a quirky heroine gets herself into a pickle and various sidekicks assist - Charlaine Harris, Anne McCaffery, Katie MacAlister and Julie Czerneda
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