I love her full series! It is much better than the Steph Plum. ( )

Max and Jamie head up to TN to figure out who's trying to kill them. While in TN Jamie acquires Fleas her dog. Their major suspect the minister ends up dead and Jamie ends up mistakely befriending a mobster that wants to kill Max. ( )

Full Speed picks up almost exactly where Full Tilt leaves off, with Max and Jamie headed out of South Carolina and into Tennessee in search of the mysterious Reverend Harlan Rawlins. The Reverend appears to want Max dead, and he and Jamie want to know why. This book had all of the madcap zaniness you’ve come to expect from a book with “Evanovich” on the cover, but this one wasn’t as good as the past two. I felt like a lot of the heat was missing between Max and Jamie. Hopefully they’ll find it again in the next book? I did enjoy the truck-lovin’, country-western-hatin’ hound dog, Fleas, and hope we see more of him in the future. ( )

This is the 3rd in the light mystery series featuring reporter Jamie Swift and millionaire playboy Max Holt. IIRC (it's been a few years), it's based on a romance Janet Evanovich wrote back in her Loveswept days. Jamie and Max didn't, however, live happily ever after--they keep skirting around the issue, irritating each other, working together, and occasionally losing control and succumbing to a clinch or two.

This time, they're after a crooked evangelist who's mob-connected--the same mob that tried to have Max killed in, I believe, the previous book, which is where Max and Jamie parted ways. Jamie ends up with a beat-up old truck that came with a dog named Fleas, then poses as a sex addict to go... ahem... undercover with the reverend.

Yeah, it sounds a little convoluted, and it is, but in an over-the-top, light-hearted, I Love Lucy kind of way. It's too fluffy to take even remotely seriously, but it's fun, anyway.

I didn't love Full Speed, but I find myself compelled to defend it anyway. (Yeah, I read the Amazon reviews again. You'd think I'd learn.) Seems most detractors focused on two things: it's not Stephanie Plum, and it's not romance. Well, duh. Could be partly due to the marketing, I suppose--Barnes & Noble lists it as romance, though it just says "fiction" on the spine. And undoubtedly the Evanovich name makes people think Stephanie Plum. Much as I enjoy the Stephanie Plum series, I'd be disappointed if this were a clone of it--what would be the point?

I don't think this is ever going to be one of my favorite series, simply because it's just so light. It's fast, and it's funny, and it's adventurous, but everything's just on the surface. And that's great for a quick pick-me-up, but it doesn't land a book on my keeper shelves. ( )

Cute