Eleven on Top (Stephanie Plum, No. 11)

Customer Reviews

• Romance+Humor!!! This one's even got a great mystery!   Jun 22, 2005 (105 of 119 found this helpful)

  Of course, I had to read "Eleven on Top" today. I can't remember ever not finishing a new Janet Evanovich novel the first day I got one. "Eleven's" no different!
  
  "Eleven" is different from its predecessors in that Stephanie Plum actually takes the advice of I've lost count how many people and quits her bounty hunter job in search of a real job. She's lucky--she gets the first job she applies for at the button factory, and the second with a local dry cleaners, and the with a fast-food chicken franchise "Cluck in a Bucket"....all with disastrously funny results.
  
  THe triangle between Steph, Joe Morelli, and Ranger is throbbing with tension. This is particularly so since Stephanie ends up working for Ranger at Rangeman Security--to keep safe. Which hunk is going to claim Steph this time--and for how long? I'm not telling!
  
  Steph is also being stalked by someone who tells her she thought they were dead. They attack with bullets, fire....Meanwhile, Steph, Ranger, and Joe are all looking for four Trenton men who have disappeared with their cars on the same day. This plotline is a real mystery folks and had me guessing all the way through the book. Definitely a great addition to the Plum series....
  
  Oh yeah, and the laughs keep on coming. Your favorites are here: Grandma Mazur, the eighty year old teenager, the prospective brother-in-law Albert Kloughn...
  
  All the Stephanie books are better than Prozac and almost as good as chocolate to cheer a person up.
  
  Evanovich is right: "Eleven" is DEFINITELY on top.

• A bit over the top  Jun 22, 2005 (53 of 66 found this helpful)

  Stephanie has decided being a bounty hunter is too dangerous, so she quits her job working for Cousin Vinnie and tries to find something safer. After working for the button factory (fired before she even starts work), a dry cleaners, and Kluck-in-a-Bucket, she finally ends up working for Ranger. However, someone is still trying to kill her, and her cars are getting blown up at an alarming rate.
  
  Also, her sister Valerie is getting married, and Stephanie is expeetec to walk up the aisle dressed in eggplant. And for no very good reason she has told her family that she can play the cello (she can't) and they are expecting her to play it at the wedding. And then she decides she is going to give up eating sugar, could things get any worse?
  
  There are a lot of funny scenes, my favourite is the one where Grandma Mazur and Grandma Bella hav a fight (in the funeral parlour, where else?). However, I found myself slightly less gripped by this one than by the previous volumes. Maybe it's because she's not a bounty hunter any more, but there seemed to be less excitement and suspense than in the other stories. And I found the denoument too preposterous to believe. Also I found myself wondering how much longer she can keep stringing Morelli along without making a committment, before he just gets fed up with her.
  
  Never mind, you don't read a Stephanie Plum novel for the realism, you read it for the laughs, and there are plenty of those, more than you get with most other authors anyway.
  
  

• Man, I love this series...  Jun 29, 2005 (12 of 13 found this helpful)

  It's a good day when the latest Stephanie Plum novel shows up... Eleven On Top by Janet Evanovich. This may be one of my favorites of the series...
  
  Stephanie Plum has decided to quit the bounty hunting business. Her life isn't going anywhere, and she's decided to get a steady job with a regular paycheck. Of course, not having anyone shoot at her or blow up her car would be nice too. But of course, nothing is normal or steady when it comes to Ms. Plum's life. She gets fired on day one from the button factory. She gets fired from the dry cleaning job after a couple of days (and when the matriarch of the owner's family dies when Plum's car blows up). And her job in the fast food business ends after a day when the chicken restaurant she works at burns down after a couple of days. So why all the pyrotechnics? Someone's apparently out to settle an old score, and Stephanie's life seems to be in peril. Threatening notes, exploding car bombs, exploding garages, burning restaurants, and she's not even in the business any more. Add into the mix that she's now working for Ranger at the same time she's trying to nurse Morelli back to health from a broken leg...
  
  As I said above, this may be one of my favorites in the Stephanie Plum series. I enjoyed the interaction between her and Lula as Lula tries to take over her old job (and still get Stephanie to help with all the apprehensions). There's a bit more Ranger time as you learn more about his business, as well as wondering whether Stephanie will succumb to her urges to jump his bones. And her gramma is as zany as ever. Even though you think you know how the story is shaping up, there are still plenty of twists that accelerate at the end, making sure that I stayed up later than I wanted to find out how it all ended.
  
  A good, fun read, and another excellent installment in the series...

• DULLER THAN A 10-YEAR-OLD PAINT JOB  Aug 5, 2005 (13 of 15 found this helpful)

  Evanovich now churns out books with about as much imagination as McDonalds pushes out hamburgers.
  
  Her books are so formulaic that only a reader with amnesia would not feel like each one is an exercise in deja vu.
  
  Evanovich puts Plum, Morelli, et al, through all the familiar paces--even the characters seem bored with the whole charade.
  
  This isn't writing, it's typing.
  
  Evanovich is really just a marketing machine; she's really no longer a writer (if she ever really was). It would be OK if she was in it for the art and the cash--now's she clearly only in it for the cash. The books are as gimmicky as the promotions that shill them (i.e. contests to name a character in her books, etc.).
  
  The best contribution Evanovich can now make to the genre of the comic novel is to quit, or actually write one that gets a genuine laugh for a change.
  
  

• Always good for lots of laughs!!  Jun 23, 2005 (10 of 11 found this helpful)

  If you don't like slapstick type of humor, these books are not for you! The first of these books I read, "Seven Up", I wasn't sure I liked but then I read "Hard Eight" and "To the Nines" and soon I got the humor and they kept me laughing.
  
  This Stephanie Plum story starts with Stephanie having quit her job as a bondsman 30 seconds before the opening of the story. Lula and Connie in her office are shocked and Vinnie, her cousin and boss, is outraged. Stephanie has decided she is tired of her cars being blown up, members of her family being hurt or in danger, and being in danger herself physically. She has heard there are job openings at the button factory in town and decides to apply there. She is hired as a receptionist to replace the one that just left and is suing for sexual harassment. Stephanie "celebrates" her new job with on-again-off-again boyfriend, Joseph Morelli, and is 90 minutes late for her first day on the job! She refuses to do any sexual favors for the boss to make up for her lateness and is fired.
  
  In the meantime, she is receiving threatening notes from an unknown stalker in her apartment and in her car. Her car is set on fire, she is shot at, her grandmother and Morelli's grandmother get into a fight at a funeral home and so on!!
  
  Lots of menace and mayhem ensue, Stephanie works hard with Ranger's and Morelli's help to investigate and find her stalker and who it is turns out a big surprise.
  
  Romance, sexual tension, suspense and lots of laughs make a fun read!