Rating: 
Summary: Great read
Review: As with all of the Stephanie Plum books, I usually read them in less than two hours. I just wanted to say I read this in the airport the other day and was actually laughing out loud. It was wonderful. Buy it today!
Rating: 
Summary: Buy the paperback and save yourself a headache.
Review: I was thrilled when I received the unabridged audiotape version of Seven Up. I love Stephanie Plum and her bumbling bounty hunter adventures and figured these tapes would be a welcome distraction during my long drive to and from work. But once I actually started listening to tape one I was not so thrilled. In fact, my head began to ache and my right temple still throbs when I so much as think of the experience (okay, so maybe I exaggerate but not by much). Now don't get me wrong, the story here is your typical Plum novel that's filled with madcap adventure and larger than life zany characters. This time around Stephanie Plum, our lovable bounty hunter, is chasing after an old coot named Eddie DeChooch. What should be an easy catch (and easy money for Stephanie) turns into so much more when a body is found on DeChooch's property. Kidnappings follow and a mad search for a missing organ ensues. To complicate matters Stephanie's sister (or shall I say "sista"?) returns home and decides to turn into a lesbian along with her are her two annoying kids (one who thinks she's a horse ~ I think she needs therapy). Fellow bounty hunter Ranger tempts Stephanie by simply being Ranger but Stephanie is still somewhat engaged to Joe Morelli the drop dead sexy cop. The action is pretty much non-stop and there are many more characters (a few too many if you ask me) who make appearances and add to the overall wacky tone of the story. Like I said, this is standard Plum fare. Though not as laugh out loud funny as some of the earlier Plum outings this story is a great way to spend a few hours. BUT please make sure you buy the paperback and not this unabridged audiotape version (with a very flimsy box, I might add). Why? Simply put the narrator, Tanya Eby, single-handedly saps the enjoyment out of the tale by slaughtering the voices. Her reading makes the listening experience highly painful. The New Jersey accents are horrendous and, what with all the "R" dropping, sound (to my MA/NH ear) more like a cartooney Boston accent than anything else. Adding to the problem is the fact that most of the characters come off sounding very much alike and at times the accent falters completely! There are also way too many moments where Stephanie's voice spouts out Morelli's lines or vice versa. It was disconcerting to say the least. Mooner (or should that be Moona?) and Dougie sound like identical morons instead of the lovable pot heads we know them to be. Daffy Grandma Mazer sounds like Katherine Hepburn on a very bad day and, well, I could go on but I'm sure you get the picture. This narrator may be a fine actress but she was a poor choice for this story. This is a cringe-worthy performance to be sure. I give this production three stars. The story actually rates a four but, ahhh!, the torturous reading of the book drags it down to a three (a two if I weren't feeling so generous).
Rating: 
Summary: A Voice to make you want to Scream
Review: I am an Evanovich fan, devouring the books as soon as they are published. I have listen to the abridged versions with Debi Masur and Lori Petty. I thought I would treat myself to an unabridged version. What a mistake. Taya Eby butchers this book. It is as though the whole book was being read by Grandma Masur. The Jersey accent is wrong, as well as fake sounding, and it is impossible to figure out which character is speaking because she uses almost the same voice. I did not make it through one side of the tapes before I threw it out. It was that annoying.
Rating:
Summary: Time for a Change
Review: After hearing about this series for years, my best friend sent me the first seven books with my Christmas gifts and I finally sat down to read them. There was some laugh-out-loud moments and the writing is very good...but by the time I finished this book, I was getting tired of the whole thing. Food falling out of Daddy Plum's mouth got old by the fourth book. Stephanie's drooling, runny nose, tingling "doodah" and checking to see if she wet her pants got old by the third book. Her ineptness got old by the second book. And her car being destroyed was old before I even finished the first book. In seven books, you would think this woman would've learned something about the job she's been doing, or that Vinnie or Ranger would've canned her by now instead of letting her continue to go out, put herself and everyone around her in danger, and jeopardize every case that she touches. Even Grandma Mazur is no longer funny. Looking in caskets once is funny. Looking in them six or seven times is just repetitious. The author has many talents as a writer, but character development is not one of them. Every character has pretty much stayed the same since the first book, and the books are starting to seem like fill-in-the-blank jobs -- you know you've read this all before, just change the names, dates and places to fit the current story. And I just don't find Stephanie likeable at all. I've read much worse series, so I'll continue with this one for now...but if we don't see some development for some of the characters soon, I'm not sure how much longer I'll continue.
Rating: 
Summary: Get the book, not the audiocassette
Review: I have been enjoying the Stephanie Plum series, which I normally get on audiotape to listen to on my commute. As far as I'm concerned, the story (I'm about halfway through) is as good as any other Stephanie Plum story, but I have to agree with the other reviewers of the audiocassette edition that they made a big mistake switching from Debi Mazar to Tanya Eby. Just dealing with a switch of narrators in a series can be tough enough when you've gotten used to someone, but Tanya Eby just isn't good at all for this series. I've never heard or seen her before, but her New Jersey dialect is awful. I don't know who she ever met from Jersey (or anywhere -- except maybe a cartoon) who talks like this! She just doesn't sound like the Stephanie we all know and love, and don't even get me started on what she does to Morelli and Lula -- argh! In all, I find the narration of this story unpleasant to the point of distraction, and would not recommend it. I'm too cheap to chuck the tape and get the book to finish it like the other reviewers did -- I've spent my money and now I'm going to stick with it till the bitter end. But I don't recommend the audiocassette format, particularly not to someone who's grown accustomed to Debi Mazar or Lori Petty. Instead, get the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: Love the book, hate that the narrator changed
Review: I absolutely 100% recommend these books. And you will love listening to the first six with C.J.Critt. I laughed so hard with "One for the Money". And she really made Ranger!All the voices were different. Unfortunately Eby couldn't pull off the characters. I was so disappointed I almost cried. I tried three times to listen to it but couldn't even get through the first side. Oh well, I hope that the new narrator for "Hard Eight" is better. C.J. Please Please come back. Stephanie needs you.
Rating:
Summary: Love the book, hate that the narrator changed
Review: I absolutely 100% recommend these books. And you will love listening to the first six with C.J.Critt. I laughed so hard with "One for the Money". And she really brought out Grandma Mauzer. But unfortunately Tanya Eby butchered the characters. She just wasn't Stephanie. I was so disappointed I almost cried. I tried three times to listen to it but couldn't even get through the first side. Oh well, I hope that the new narrator for "Hard Eight" is better. C.J. Please Please come back. Stephanie needs you.
Rating:
Summary: Seven Up Review
Review: The book Seven Up is about a bounty hunter named Stephanie Plum. Stephanie is in charge of finding people who don't show up for their trial hearing. This job can be a challenging, dangerous job, which can involve dealing with cunning and intellignet people. For most of the book, Stephanie is trying to hunt down a depressed eighty year old man named Eddie DeChooch. Sounds like a fairly easy job but let's throw in one more detail: not only is this man a quick thinker, he also has possession of a gun. Eddie may be old, but he can still pull a trigger. The chase continues throughout most of the book and Stephanie doubts at times she will ever find him. This boook was really funny and hilarious. I know I laughed every time I turned a page. I would rate this book somewhere between a four and a five because I really enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed.
Review: It was the first of the Evanovich books that I read. I can't say I enjoyed it very much. Maybe I should've started with Number 1. The main character of Stefanie struck me as more or less stupid and totally overwhelmed with her job. There was nothing funny about her personality. The book dragged until the end. I was used to better entertainment from Sue Grafton's ABC series. That was one reason I picked up Evanovich. Unfortunately the latter couldn't quite cut the mustard.
I have to say, though that reading the other reviews makes me re-consider. Maybe I should've started with No. 1.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Wonderful Stephanie Plum Adventure!
Review: "Seven Up" by Janet Evanovich is another delightful chapter in the always-amusing Stephanie Plum series, and I thought it was great. Filled with the eccentric and quirky cast of characters we have grown to know and love over the last six books, "Seven Up" provides another wonderful dose of the world of bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. In this seventh instalment, Stephanie is given a seemingly simple FTA (failure to appear) to pick up. Eddie DeChooch, an aging and nearly blind mobster, missed his court date after getting busted smuggling cigarettes. It shouldn't be too hard to pick up an old man, but Stephanie soon finds out that Eddie DeChooch still has a few tricks up his sleeve, after several attempts to bring him in fail. Stephanie's life, which was left hanging in the balance at the end of "Hot Six", is hugely complicated by a sort-of engagement to her sexy cop boyfriend Joe Morelli and a growing attraction to fellow bounty hunter and mentor Ranger. Not only is Stephanie confused about the two men in her life, she's also being trailed by two of Choochy's elderly friends, who keep breaking into her apartment. Not to mention Stephanie's spaced out, pothead friends from high school, the lovable Mooner and Dougie, who keep showing up at odd times and letting themselves in. And then Steph's perfect sister Valerie suddenly arrives from California with her two daughters and the astonishing news that her perfect marriage is over. With so many things going on in her life, Stephanie isn't having much luck finding Eddie DeChooch, who is driving around in a big white Cadillac and should be simple to find. Things start to get fun, however, when yet another of Steph's cars is destroyed, and she and her sidekick, the 200+lb ex-hooker Lula, end up riding around on a Harley! But Stephanie's interviews with horny nephews and mud-wrestlers get her nowhere, so she goes to Ranger for help. And sure Ranger will help, but only if Stephanie agrees to spend a night with him. Oh boy! Not the kind of thing a sort-of-engaged girl should agree to. Grandma Mazur is in top form in "Seven Up"; full of gossip from Stiva's funeral parlor and getting involved in all kinds of bizarre and hilarious situations. But things start going bad fast when one after another of Stephanie's friends start disappearing, and it becomes clear that there's a lot more going on than cigarette smuggling. So it's up to Stephanie to solve the mystery, find her missing friends and save the day, and if she wants Ranger's help, she's all too aware of the price she'll have to pay. Well what can I say about "Seven Up" except for what fun! This book is filled with all the wackiness and excitement we have come to expect from a Stephanie Plum novel. "Seven Up" is another uproariously funny adventure that kept me laughing the whole way through and sent me straight out to the bookstore to buy "Hard Eight" when I was done. "Seven Up" is another excellent read in this fabulous series and I recommend it without reservation.
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