One for the Money by Janet Evanovich is the first book in the series and probably my last. I found it slow, uninteresting and predictable. It is a mystery and reminded me of a modern day Agatha Christie whose books I do not like.

One for the Money is a wonderful book! (REPOSTING DUE TO MOVIE RELEASE!)

I have always read psycho-thrillers, romance, paranormal romance etc. My momma told me, “You have to read Evanovich! You’ll laugh so hard!”

So, I did.

Stephanie Plum is a super cool character. She’s like any regular woman in the world, a fun personality shaped with a loving family, embarrassing moments and some bitter days. She lost her job. Her car was repossessed. She was forced to resort to accepting a job with her cousin Vinnie.

A bounty hunter! She isn’t quite sure where to start. Her nerves are a little jittery and she doesn’t really have a clue what she’s doing. Talk about a blast!

Joe Morelli is a charming, sexy man from her past. Playing tunnels and trains when they were 6 and then taking her virginity at age 16 behind the pastry counter. Years afterwards, Stephanie saw him walking down a sidewalk and hopped the curb with her car and bounced him off the hood. Bonus! Pay backs rock!

Stephanie’s first day on the job, her first FTA, failure to appear, is Joe Morelli himself! Hilarious. The relationship is fiery. He’s a cop trying to prove his innocence of the murder charges against him. She’s a bounty hunter, a woman from his past, and she is relentless.

Grandma Mazur is one of neatest characters I’ve ever read. Imagine your grandma, holding your gun at the dinner table. She’s all excited about you becoming a bounty hunter. She gets your gun to show it off to your family and the man they are trying to set you up with. Somehow, she loads the gun and BAM! She shoots the cooked chicken sitting in the middle of the table!

Several dangerous bumps in the road. Although I love heart pounding dramatic moments, there are a few scenes in this book that were worthy of “covering my eyes during a really scary part during a movie.” The details become very gruesome and I wasn’t sure if I was going to bother reading the second book.

In the end, the unpredictable ending, the revenge that is taken, the justice that rips through the bad guys was awe-inspiring.

I have read this series before. I do recommend this book and series to anyone that needs a laugh. The second book, Two for the Dough is off the charts better than the first. If One for the Money doesn’t make you run for Two for the Dough, just take a deep breath and read the second one.

The relationships that are formed are so funny. I was sitting on the couch and I couldn’t stop laughing. My chest burned for air while my family stared at me wondering what was happening. Two for the Dough is beyond hilarious. If you are trying to read and others are sleeping, move as far away from them as possible. Your laughter will shatter their sleep

This book should not be read by children or immature young adults.

I was hoping to get a fun, easy read out of this. A book that would be entertaining and funny while keeping me interested and (hopefully) giving myself a new series to read throughout other books I have on my "to-be-read" shelf. However, this book was not that.

I see the merit in this story and I did have a few chuckles but I found it to be quite dated. I understand it was written in 1994 but a lot of it came off as a bit misogynistic to me. Not only that but the plot was slow to say the least and felt like it was consistently dragging. For a book so short I felt like a lot of time was wasted on developing setting over characters which rubbed me the wrong way.

Despite the lacking character development I did genuinely like both Stephanie and Joe and I enjoyed their back and forth. I may give the second book a try down the line because I feel like I must be missing something here considering that this is an exceptionally highly rated book but for me, it just fell a little flat.

Stephanie Plum has hit some hard times. She’s lost her job as a buyer of cheap lingerie, fallen behind on her bills and has had her beloved car repossessed. She’s got moldy cheese and a stale loaf of bread in the fridge and she has hawked most of her furniture and major appliances to pay the rent and procure a P.O.S Nova. Stephanie doubts things could get much worse. She’s about to be proven wrong.

In a stroke of dumb luck, or perhaps, an evil twist of fate, Stephanie lands a job at her uncle Vinnie’s bonding company as a bounty hunter. It’s Stephanie’s duty to bring in FTA’s in exchange for 10% of the bond. When Stephanie is informed about an FTA worth 10 grand, Stephanie is all over it, until she discovers the FTA is none other than Joe Morelli, Stephanie’s childhood nemesis, who taught her how to play train at the age of six and deflowered her behind an éclair case 10 years later. She may have clipped him in the leg with her dad’s Buick three years later, but thoughts of Morelli still rankle. What follows is an amusing, entertaining and at times, pretty sexy man hunt.

Stephanie isn’t brilliant, but she certainly isn’t dumb, more hilarious because of her dumb luck than snide humor, she’s a pretty endearing heroine. I enjoyed the time spent with One for the Money and find myself wanting to dive in to book two as soon as possible. Great way to spend a Sunday.

So with the release of the movie, I thought some words were in order. First off, this book is nothing more than pure, uncut sugar for the brain. The writing is, meh. The characters are, meh; except for grandma, she's funny as shit. But the overall story really did nothing for me. For some reason I just couldn't get excited about a female bailbondsman trying to make ends meet. And her exploits never really engaged me. (I know that was a very poor, and probbaly inadequate summary, O well.) Sadly, I will never know the rest of the adventures of Stephanie Plum.

SKIP (But don't listen to me, I'm in the minority; you may like it.)

I read the original in hard cover years ago so this is a reread. I think it is the best of the series. Evanovich managed to bring humor to what is the gritty reality of life in working class New Jersey. Her portraits of the various characters who inhabit this world are a hoot! She can sketch a person's personality in two or three short phrases and the reader can see this individual in toto with all warts and idiosyncrasies exposed! What can I say? Evanovich has a gift!

I must be the only one who read this and found it more depressing than funny.

Although there were a couple of times I laughed (few, to be honest, but enough to make me not hate this book), I didn't like Stephanie Plum at all. I am not saying we should all be scared and sit in our house because we might get hurt, but there is being wise and there is being Stephanie. The book summary is way better than the book itself.

You know those films where a cop is accused of something and he sets out to clear his name? Everyone likes those. Well, imagine watching it but from the perspective of a side character who is doing everything in her power to undermine what he is trying to do. The worst thing is she isn't doing it because she is a bad person or evil. That would be this book in a nutshell.

I don't mind light humorous stories. I just find Stephanie annoying here.

It is possible that I wasn't in the right mood for this. Maybe the second book is more entertaining and the main character grows on me. I doubt it since it seems the whole series is one messy love triangle. I hate them.

Stephanie Plum: a 6 anni gioca al trenino con Joe Morelli. A 16 gli vende il bignè, nonostante tutti, mamma compresa, continuassero ad avvertirla di stare lontana dal bad boy. Per tanti anni non si sono più cagati, come da copione: Joe Morelli è il tipo da "una botta e via". Ma poi, sulla soglia dei 30, senza uno straccio di lavoro e senza qualcuno da cui farsi mantenere, decide di diventare un'agente di recupero. Allettata probabilmente da quei bei soldoni se mai fosse stata in grado di consegnare alla polizia nientepopodimeno che... Morelli.

Sentite, a me aveva già convinto a pagina 2.
Se poi considerate le innumerevoli gag comiche tra i due (da Morelli che si introduce in casa della Plum e l'ammanetta alla doccia, alla completa immersione nei cassoni dell'immondizia per recuperare le chiavi dell'auto, al diffamare Morelli con delle prostitute), la sbadataggine universalmente riconosciuta di lei, e le assurde situazioni in cui viene coinvolta avete fatto tredici.

Oh, è pure breve!

I really enjoyed this book. This connection is what I was expecting when I read the In Death Series by JD Robb. I am glad I finally listened to it.

Stephanie Plum needs money. She lost her job and she is about to lose her apartment and her phone is to get cut off too. In her fridge, she has fig newtons.
Her cousin Vinnie is a bails bondsman and hires Stephanie to help locate people who were FTA ~ jumped bail (Fail to Appear).
Her first assignment was to find and apprehend "rogue" cop Joe Morelli, Stephanie's old high school crush. She knows nothing about this job but she is so desperate that she will try her hand at trying to find Morelli.

What I enjoyed was the humor. She was literally tumbling and bumbling her way around New Jersey. She didn't know what she is doing but she kept ending up at the right place at the right time.

It's clear that she has residual feelings for Morelli. I hope she makes him work for it because Morelli played her a few times and he is playboy. Fun dialogue, good writing, interesting plot.

re-read

I can see why a lot of people enjoy this series - and I think I will too! The MC is sassy, and it was a funny, quick read.

New Jersey.

Stephanie's all grown up and out on her own, living five miles from Mom and Dad's, doing her best to sever the world's longest umbilical cord. Her mother is a meddler, and her grandmother is a few cans short of a case.

I don't think I have EVER laughed so hard while reading a novel. Grandma Mazur had me in stitches. Crying, howling with mirth. I know, it might be a corny question, but ... just tell me... how in this whole wide world can you shoot off a chicken's privates? All that shooting made Granny hungry. She asked to be passed the potatoes, while everyone else was still recovering from wherever they've gone in mental hiding from the shock.

Dad's face was cranberry red. His knuckles white clutching the fork. It was not only the shooting that caused his condition. Also not the acrobatic chicken jumping up and down on the serving board when the bullet passed through it and ended up in the mahogany table. There was more than one clown at their table, but he ain’t talking.

Bernie Kuntz suffered through two helpings of Mom's Brussel sprout casserole afterwards. Thanks to Grandma Mazure, any notion of romance between Stephany Plum and Bernie Kuntz went awol with the bullet. Mom was upset about more than just the broken plate and her chair which did a thundering somersault to the floor.

"Dang, Grandma said, "guess I left the wrong hole empty." She leaned forward to examine her handiwork. "Not bad for my first time with a gun. I shot that sucker right in the grumpy."

Ok, it wasn't grandma being facetious, it was me. I couldn't help it either. I was the only one laughing. Now bite me. The author made me do it!

(Stephanie) is a product of the "burg," a blue-collar pocket of Trenton where houses are attached and narrow, cars are American, windows are clean, and (God forbid you should be late) dinner is served at six.

Jobless, car-less, and almost homeless, Stephanie Plum becomes a bounty hunter, after blackmailing her cousin, Vinnie, for the job. As Murphy would have it, her inexperience soon leads to chaos and mayhem when her first case is the guy who deflowered her, aged sixteen at the time, in the bakery, and was now standing accused of killing a man. Vice Cop Joseph Morelli allegedly killed an unarmed man and was out on bail of $100 000. Stephanie desperately needed the money. If she could bring him in, she gets 10%.

Although some banter lifted the atmosphere from time to time, the situation was serious.
Her life was in danger and with a lack of skills she needed a village to support her in capturing her wham-bam-thank-you-mam first lover. A little bit of revenge would have been in order.

Tensions ran high: all kinds of tension. And that's all I'm going to say. :-))

This is a fast-moving, detective drama, with some real issues thrown in to add some weight to the plot. Some of the situations were not so believable, but nevertheless did not interfere too much with the entertainment value. Highly enjoyable, and with times, totally freaky!

I needed something feel-good to read, and this community affair, with the delightful Plum family adding the bright colors, worked splendidly. And yes, the ending was dramatic, scary, but very good!