Janet Evanovich is back with the 18th book in her best-selling Stephanie Plum series and the famous female bounty hunter is up to her old tricks once again.

Stephanie Plum's vacation to Hawaii didn't quite go as planned but she made it home to Trenton alive and that's more than the guy in the seat next to her can say. Soon Stephanie finds herself in the middle of an international murder investigation with some pretty shady people tracking her down. She would be nervous about it, but when Joyce Barnhardt moves into her apartment she knows she has bigger things to worry about.

Like all of the Stephanie Plum series, Explosive Eighteen is a fun, face-paced book that keeps you turning pages. The plot follows the same formula as all of the rest of the series (Stephanie trying to catch lame bad guys + real bad guys trying to catch Stephanie + explosions + car issues + pizza + beer + men), but Evanovich's characters make the story compelling. They are colorful and quirky and down right hilarious. These books cause me to laugh out loud...often. And I'll keep reading them as long as she keeps writing them. If you're looking for a laugh, you should definitely check these out.

American Gods is written by best selling author, Neil Gaiman. Clay read this book at the recommendation of his mom and since he really enjoyed it, I gave it a go as well. 

For three years, Shadow has been counting down the days until his release from prison. He's kept his head down, done his time and patiently awaited to return home to his wife, his friends, and his job. And just when the end is in sight, his world is flipped upside down.

Left to pick up the pieces of a shattered existence, Shadow is approached by Mr. Wednesday, a man who seems to know everything about him. Despite their strange encounters, or possibly because of them, Mr. Wednesday convinces Shadow to go work for him and their journey down the rabbit hole begins. The path they take leads Shadow far beyond the realm of his own imagination and soon he finds himself in the middle of a conflict where the lines between beliefs and truths are blurred. Shadow must discover the truth before it's too late and decide whose side he's on.

This book lands somewhere in the middle for me. The story is interesting enough. The characters are well written and Gaiman does a nice job of weaving together the mythology of several different religions to create some thought provoking moments. Unfortunately, I'm certain that my lack of mythological knowledge forced some of the book's coolness to be lost on me. Gaiman's pacing of the story was very even keeled and moved the plot along just fine, but there's wasn't a ton of action so nothing really ever felt emotionally charged. Upon reflection, I think the story could have been written so that it was more compelling but overall, I found American Gods to be good...just not great.