Takedown Twenty: A Stephanie Plum Novel

I haven't read her books for a while. I took a break. This book was very good. I actually laughed out loud at some parts. Janet Evanovich is getting better and better.

I thought the book was funny, as always, but halfway through I felt like Evanovich was just trying to fill pages and not follow a plot. Still a good book, and I’ll forever be a Stephanie Plum fan

And it kept us from going to sleep at the wheel. Thank you!

First this isn't that bad of a book/story. No, the giraffe at the start got my attention and hopes up. The usual suspects are here Ranger, Morelli, Lulu, and the rest. We still have Stephanie torn between Morelli and Ranger. Morelli will not make a commitment and neither will Stephanie. We still get clothes description of Lulu and Grandma still goes to funerals. Stephanie still drives crap cars, plus there is a mystery and bail jumper to catch which Stephanie still has her usual trouble with.You have now noticed the over use of "still." There is my point and revelation about this series. Nothing has changed. The plot, the characters, the action have not changed from the beginning books. What has changed is me, the reader. I remember laughing out loud at the action and the characters. I remember looking forward to each new book in the series. Then some where around book 8 or so, things changed. The out loud laughs were less frequent and I began to become bored with the plot. However, I faithfully kept buying the books in hope that they would get better.This brings me to this book. It is as I said okay, not great, just okay. I managed a smile, or two, so it was okay. Then after I finished the book, I stopped and thought, "What's wrong with this?" The answer was, nothing really, it just didn't move me like before. So my revelation is maybe the problem is me. Maybe the problem is me. Maybe I have out grown Stephanie. Considering how many Plum clones are in print now, just maybe I have moved on. Then this hit me, maybe the author has out grown Stephanie too. Evoanovich's Pro and Con series is not bad and seems fresh, so.... maybe both of us have moved on?If you are still with me then you have read all 20 of these books. Maybe you have moved on to someone or something else, if not I hope you enjoyed this book and wish you luck on the next one. As for me, I think I will move on to .....oh I don'tknow but, :Bye Stephanie."P.S. As for the giraffe that ending really sucked.

Stephanie Plum is the biggest klutz and worst bounty hunter this side of, well, anywhere. It is always by sheer dumb luck or with the help of the uber sexy Ranger that she actually catches any of her skips. But what can I say, the girl does it with flare.Over the last twenty books we have watched Stephanie scramble and struggle to be a bounty hunter. She has blown up cars, been kidnapped, shot people, been shot at, caught things on fire, and all sometimes within one book. She has the worst luck when it comes to bounty hunting and is the walking poster for Murphy's Law. One place she doesn't need help? The men department.She has two very sexy and successful men chasing her. First, there is Morrelli, the Trenton cop, that would give anything for Stephanie to stop being a bounty hunter. And then there's Ranger, the drop dead gorgeous private security specialist that is always there to rescue Stephanie when she finds herself in a pickle. Both men want Stephanie... Stephanie wants both men, but she can't decide which to have. She knows that Morrelli is the safe way to go, he's stable, sweet, and would no doubt be a great dad. But Ranger... oh Ranger would be hands down steamy. Ranger is dangerous in the best ways.In every book there is incredible sexual tension between these three as Stephanie is torn between the sexy cop and the panty dropping security specialist. And with every book I become more aggravated that Stephanie can't make a dang decision or manage to not get her car blown up, stolen or vandalized. Frankly after twenty books the whole story is getting a little old.I still love Stephanie and really want to follow this story to the end just to see who she finally ends up with, but when is enough enough? These books used to be laugh out loud funny and now I can predict pretty much everything that is going to happen and I am not laughing nearly as much as I used to. I am saddened to say that these books have become rather cookie cutter... Stephanie chases skip, skip get's away... with her car, it get's blown up, ran over, smashed, destroyed... Ranger has to step in and save her. Morrelli doesn't like it. Stephanie tries again, get's better, does something klutzy... solves a big crime by accident and stumbles over which man to bed with. Yup that's it in a nutshell.With every book I hope it will be better. That it will be the laugh out loud riot it used to be, but I am sorry to say that Janet Evanovich just needs to end this series and give us all a little closure. Does that mean I won't be tuning in for Top Secret Twenty-One??? Unfortunately I am a glutton for punishment and think that I must suffer to the end, so yea I will probably tune it... I just hope I won't regret it.

This series is always fun with many unexpected twist and turns. And I've even read this one before and it was still just as much fun.

Stephani Plum is a blast! Always makes me laugh!

I took a break from Stephanie et al for a few years and started back in with #19 and got to #22 in two days. Still enjoy the antics in Trenton - even if the escapades are sometimes ridiculous. It’s light hearted but quite a true Jersey voice. It makes me recall my years living in northern NJ where you sometimes saw these types of characters (though not as extreme of course!). Never sure how JE is going to resolve the love triangle...it’s been going quite a while and has to finish somehow, sometime. Also think less donuts, fries, burgers and onion rings would be healthy 😀

Every year I vow to give up reading the Stephanie Plum series, and every year I read the next one to find myself hugely disappointed. My teenage daughter loves the series and requested the book for Christmas. She loved it. I didn't.I think this is the weakest book of the whole series. The crime element was very poorly written. It seemed very hasty and ill conceived. Even the love triangle element fizzled out in this volume. The incidental characters were all bland and cartoonish, which leaves nothing much of anything left to say. Evanovich has written herself into a corner. The characters are nothing but caricatures, nothing happens to move them on in terms of plot or growth and in trying to maintain the status quo the books have lost all their spark, all their charm and anything that made them a delight to read.

I enjoyed this book which was a little bit of a surprise as I hadn't expected to, having previously read so many bad reviews of it. However, I am never bored during these escapades and get through them in a couple days, I don't hold out any expectations when I purchase these stories and I am not looking for an edge of the seat thriller I just enjoy the ride as I go along in one of the endless stream of cars Stephanie is given by Ranger, inexplicably, which I notice is questioned in this book by Lula, to witness the craziness that is Ms Plums life.Regarding the evolution of Stephanie's character there definitely is very little progress here. As mentioned by many others, it's the same old thing, a Plum novel seemingly by numbers.However, when those numbers add up they make a very entertaining read and have made this series so popular. The numbers being the hilarious antics Stephanie and Lula get up to which I did lol at more than a couple of times. The peripheral characters that surround our main protagonist such as Ranger, Joe Morelli, Morelli's grandma, Stephanie's grandma and parents as well as all the other assorted regulars and locations make this series a very familiar and welcome place to visit if not to escape and view the madcap goings on.I can't say I invested much in the mystery element of the plot regarding who did it, but enjoyed the investigations which led to it's conclusion. I think for me I always enjoy the oddballs like the butcher and strange people encountered at the funeral home and the other FTA's the bounty hunter comes across. I definitely think the novelty of people blowing up the cars, getting into Ms Plum's apartment all the time and her endless hand wringing about who she wants romantically has worn off so I try to ignore it. Her diet is a little tedious too but made up for by her mother cooking, well almost !I will continue to read these books as they will always provide a few hours of welcome escapism into a strange world I don't think I want to live in but am comfortable to view from afar.I will definitely read twenty one and

There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of very funny lines in this book; but they are not enough to make up for the lack of a story.Also, what story there is, never progresses throughout the series. The reader is stuck, volume after volume, static in a sea of one liners.

Brilliant, classic Stephanie Plum and Lula. Read the whole thing in a single day. Great vocabulary. Perfect pacing. And an elusive giraffe in Trenton, New Jersey. Would make a huge movie. Shame that Marisa Tomei and Tea Leoni are too old for the part. But that's what it needs.