Todays charity shop bargain...

[ffutures]

...was Plum Lovin' by Janet Evanovich, the new Stephanie Plum hardcover, at £2 instead of $16.95

And having read a little way into it I can see why it ended up in a charity shop so quickly. It's a sequel to Visions of Sugar Plums, her Xmas story of a year or two ago, and only 164 pages. And like Visions of Sugar Plums it reads a lot like a Mary-Sue crossover fanfic, in which Our Heroine is the only way a super-powered super-hunk can think of to track down an evil super. The SP books have always had this Mary-Sue element, but it is usually a lot more subdued - here there is no obvious reason why SP should be the detective of choice when dealing with a rogue super, and attempts to justify it make it make the unlikeliness of the character a little too obvious.

I may be misjudging it, and as I said I haven't read much of it yet, but I'm not optimistic. More (possibly) when I finish it.

Comments

[uninvitedcat.livejournal.com]

Urgh - sounds terrible!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Well, remember that this is just a first impression - but Visions of Sugar Plums sucked.

[uninvitedcat.livejournal.com]

I was hugely disappointed when I read Visions of Sugar Plum last year. Talk about what not to do with your series! If this one is shaping up to be similar, I shall do my utmost to avoid. Unless it really manages to pull it out of the bag and impress you!

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

I find that with Evanovich, it is safer to just stick to the longer novels.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Is "charity shop" the standard British noun? Here in the USA, we say "thrift store" for what I think must be the same concept.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think so - or the name of the charity e.g. Oxfam shop or Oxfam book shop; Oxfam have a lot of bookshops dotted around the UK.