Not so Sizzling ...

Ever gone to a fancy restaurant and order a meal that sounds wonderful on the menu and looks even better placed before you - you are salivating with anticipation but then you begin eating it and you start to wonder how could it look and smell so devine but really taste very ordinary and when you finally finish you are left with a sense of disappointment because it was just lacking something - more seasoning, less sauce ? - you're not sure but just know you are oddly dissatisfied.

That is how I feel having just read "Sizzling 16" by Janet Evanovich.  I'm a self confessed Stephanie Plum addict having read and re-read her antics in the series over the past 15 books.  I've loved Stephanie Plum, her bumbling bounty hunter antics, her destruction of car after car, her rescueunbg of Grandma Mazer from funeral home viewings, her long suffering mother.  I've laughed til I cried over vivid descriptions of Lula and Stephanie in outlandish situations, I've simmered through pent up sexual tension between Ranger, Stephanie and Morelli.  "Sizzling 16" still has it all so what am I complaining about?  To be honest I'm not sure - I want Stephanie to grow up and develop more as a character, I want her to make a decision about which guy she wants, I want her to catch a crook without forgetting her handcuffs or rolling around on the floor in some dubious substance, I want her and the series, in short, to move forward.  Every good thing needs to come to an end sometime and I feel that Stephanie Plum needs to go in this direction - four more books and four more stories to wrap up the loose ends and have her fading off happily into the sunset.  I'm sure Janet Evanovich will put us all out of our collective misery by Book 20.