Thoughts on Stephanie Plum and Kinsey Milhone

On road trips, Chris and I listen to books on tape.  We particularly enjoy the Stephanie Plum series, by Janet Evanovich; not so much for the stories, but for the reader , Lorelei King, who makes the characters come alive.   We are as far as number nineteen and we started discussing the characters and where they have come.  Chris said he really liked Ranger and I had to concur.  It' silly when you start talking about the story arc and how you hope it will turn out, isn't it?  For me, I hope Stephanie DOESN'T  wind up with Joe Morelli.  In my mind, Ranger is better for her.  He cares about her and seems to respect her intellect.  He accepts who she is, and doesn't want to turn her into a little housewife, when that is not her bent.  Let me say that there is nothing wrong with being a housewife, if that's what you want to do.  It's being forced into the mold that would be wrong.  Sure, Stephanie is not a bad-ass bounty hunter and she seems to be extremely lucky in her adventures, but in all of the books so far, she has not expressed one iota of Domestic Godess-ness.  He idea of "cooking "is a peanut butter and pimento sandwich.  Ugh.  She does clean up the place but not on a regular basis.  She takes her laundry to her mother.  You see where I am going with this.  Joe Morelli seems to think she will change if he marries her, something he is currently "road testing" in his mind in the book we are "reading".  He has told her TWICE in this book so far that she need to change jobs and suggests traditional "female" jobs.  I am liking him less and less as he begins to treat Stephanie like a sex toy rather than a partner.  Maybe I am projecting.  Years ago, I knew far too many "macho jerks" who thought once they did the woman the favor of marrying her, her body belonged to him to do with as he pleased, no matter what she wanted or didn't want.   I never had much patience for that kind of behavior.

Still, I hope that Evanovich won't go the "safe" route and marry Stephanie off to Joe at the end of the series, whenever that happens. Unlike Sue Grafton's  Kinsey Milhone series, which is wheezing and chugging to the end of the alphabet, Stephanie's series is numbers and can go on and on until she gets a walker.  I hope that Evanovich doesn't do that.  The Kinsey Milhone books got dull and predictable and mean-spirited somewhere around the middle of the alphabet.  I stopped reading them for a while and recently tried to pick them up again. I realized that I didn't LIKE Kinsey anymore.  She's really judgmental; every woman is either too fat or too thin and every man is over the hill or looking to jump Kinsey's bones.  Even her landlord Henry has become a pill.  These books are not a place I want to spend a lot of my time; and really that's what a good book does.  It takes you to another place you want to spend time hanging out in.  They make you laugh, make you dream, quicken your pulse or challenge your intellect. Anything else is a waste of time.