Naked Heat by Richard Castle

This is the first book I've read by the fictional Richard Castle. I love the show Castle, mainly because I adore Nathan Fillion. I honestly had no idea that Castle's books were being published at the same time. The more you know....

I listened to this audiobook and I feel like I should give Castle another chance. I really had issues with the reader. His voices were sometimes just over the top and took me out of the plot. I think the next Castle book I try, I'll read.

Nikki Heat is trying to solve the murder of a notorious gossip columnist Cassidy Towne. Unfortunately, Jameson Rook (the fictionalized writer of the fictionalized Castle - got that?) was already at the scene of the murder when Heat gets there. Apparently this is the 2nd book and picks up from the first, Heat Wave. I missed that. But this proves you don't need to read the books in order.

Lots of high profile celebrities and a fired limo driver just complicate matters. This isn't stellar writing, but it's entertaining and I enjoyed it.

Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich

I realized as I was reading this that I didn't read #17. Ah well. If anything, this is a series that can be easily read out of order without missing a beat. Essentially it IS the same story over and over again but I got to say.... I really enjoyed this one.

Stephanie Plum just gets home from a trip to Hawaii and everything is confused and complicated. We eventually get the story pieced together and, not surprisingly, it involves Ranger and Morelli. Throw in a dead guy in a trash can, a photo that appeared in Stephanie's messenger bag and Lula with a rocket launcher and this is one of the better books in the series.

Hit List by Laurell K. Hamilton

The newest Anita Blake, vampire hunter, book. I've long since given up buying these when Hamilton seemed to taking this down a different path *cough*softcheesyporn*cough* but I checked this out from the library because I'm a damn optimistic.

I was really happy with this one...until I got really confused. We start out with Anita and Edward, fulfilling their U.S. Marshal duties by tracking a serial killer of weres. I think Anita and Edward work really well together and we know (I hope) that she won't suddenly start having sex with him so we're practically guaranteed a good action-y story. And that's what we got for a while. Fast paced and entertaining.

Then comes Anita's "sweeties". WHY?? It was going so well. Then we have almost 2 pages just describing the HAIR of her sweeties. Seriously? Olaf and Bernardo are back. Bernardo I like, Olaf needs to be gone. For a psychopathic serial killer turned Marshal, he's just boring.

The sex was much less this go around (yay) but the lingering descriptions of all these idiots surrounding Anita were plentiful (boo). The end was so abrupt and odd that I was concerned that I had really missed something. A big buildup leading to a little pfffft. (Almost like Breaking Dawn).

I think I'm disappointed with this one.

Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell

This one confused me. I had to check it out from the library twice with a gap in between but as I started it I was pretty excited that this seemed like it was going to be a great Scarpetta book. I used to really love this series but it just seemed to veer off track somewhere and I no longer buy the books.

I think this turned in to an okay Scarpetta book. Good but I'll honestly probably forget the plot within a month. This one is basically a continuation of the last book, where all sorts of murders were happening and Jack Fielding, someone Kay was mentoring for years, turned into a very strange, dead man. That book confused me too.

Anyways, this started out with a lot of potential but almost 200 pages in I was still waiting for something to happen. It finally did, with a somewhat main character being killed off, and a 9 year old murder case being brought back into the fold. But....I'm not sure, this just felt a little slapped together at the end. It's possible I'm thinking back to the earlier stuff like The Body Farm and my expectations are too high, but I wasn't happy nor was I unhappy. It just was.

I've never really paid attention, I guess, but it seems like Kay talks A LOT. Constantly. And it seemed odd as well.