I should probably confess right now that I have not read all of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books. In fact, while I’m admitting things, I’ve probably only read the first two. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not because I didn’t enjoy them. I did. As far as excuses go, I have none. Phew. Confession over. Moving on.
When it comes to her other series, however, I am on top of things. Fox and O’Hare? Check. Lizzy and Diesel? As of just today, check.
Wicked Charms is the latest installment of Evanovich’s Lizzy and Diesel series, which combines mystery, comedy, and paranormal with a dose of baking. (This one was co-authored with Phoef Sutton.)
If you read my previous post, I made no secret of the fact that I like funny. I like witty repartee. I like slapstick (in books). Janet Evanovich knows how to do this and do it well.
In the first book of the series, Lizzy, a pastry chef who lives in Salem, Mass. (of all places), discovered that she has a power to detect magical objects, which leads to her introduction to Diesel and endless situations in which the world’s fate hangs in the balance. Oh, and her power also extends to her baking so that her cupcakes are out-of-this-world. Now that’s a superpower!
In Wicked Charms, Lizzy and Diesel must track down coins that fit together so that they can find a treasure and the greed stone. There’s madness. There’s mayhem. There’s mystery. There’s mirth. And who can beat a good dose of mirth?
Put mirth together with a monkey who likes to give people the finger, a magical broom called, oddly enough, “Broom,” a would-be witch named Glo whose spells never quite work out and Diesel’s cousin, Wulf, who looks like a vampire minus the fangs and is also out to get the stones that Lizzy and Diesel are after, and what you have is a book version of a “romp.” (Oh, and for clarity’s sake, the romp I mean is the traditional one, not the one you find in Urban Dictionary; thanks.)
While Wicked Charms is probably not going to be number one on a best literature site, it is great at what it does: it provides the reader with several hours of amused escapism and some definite lol-ing. There’s never anything wrong with that.
From Amazon: Wicked Charms: A Lizzy and Diesel Novel (Lizzy and Diesel Novels)
