Calamity Jayne Rides Again
Grade : C-

Calamity Jayne Rides Again is the second book by Kathleen Bacus in her light mystery/romance series. The heroine, her love interest, and the secondary characters are all nice, decent people. They are also quite uninteresting to read.

Tressa Turner never minds working at her Uncle Frank’s ice cream stands during the Iowa State Fair. She gets unlimited access to his yummy goodies and free food samples from the other fair vendors. This time, however, trouble comes a-knocking at her uncle’s business. First, Uncle Frank’s son, Frankie, leaves his post at the smaller ice cream stand and never returns. Later that night, six-legged pests overrun the larger ice cream stand (it’s actually a store). Fortunately, Tressa and some other people stumble onto the scene and thoroughly manage to sterilize the store. The two incidents seem highly suspicious and make Uncle Frank speculate out loud if his son is trying to sabotage his business. Tressa doesn’t believe that Frankie is to blame, but when more incidents happen, she decides she had better find out who is.

That’s pretty much the plot, thin as it is. Although the acts of sabotage continue and become more serious each time, Tressa and the other characters never show much urgency or interest in uncovering the culprit. Tressa works at the ice cream stands, chows down on fair food, does a little sleuthing, eats more fair food, banters and bickers with her family and friends, sleuths a little more, eats much more, and well, you get the picture. It’s all so…so…unexceptional.

Frankie resurfaces - finally - after hiding out around the fairgrounds and begs Tressa to help him clear his name. She agrees and shortly afterwards receives some grudging help from Rick Townsend, the hunky guy she has had a crush on since she was a young girl.

As her brother’s best friend since childhood, Rick has known Tressa forever and has always teased and tormented her, even giving her the embarrassing nickname "Calamity Jayne" because she got into so many mishaps when she was young. However, an unexpected romance sparked between them in the previous book. Unfortunately, both are skittish about starting a serious relationship with each other, especially Tressa, who doesn’t want to risk having her heart broken by the well-known ladies’ man.

For all their character development, Tressa and Rick are very bland. Tressa is an agreeable, good-natured, and ordinary young woman who resides in the Midwest heartland. She is the town’s dumb blonde who found her brain in the previous book when she helped in solving a murder mystery. Tressa’s newly intelligent personality should have made for intriguing reading, but it wasn’t.

Rick is your typical tall, muscular, and gorgeous male lead. He’s a ranger for the Department of Natural Resources and he likes Tressa, but their scenes together are too few, too far apart, and too tepid. The scenes between easygoing Tressa and her sickly, wimpy cousin Frankie were actually more fun and enjoyable. Later in the book, the interactions between Rick and Tressa become more interesting, but they came too late for me.

Even the comedy is bland. Jokes like "Townsend is one of those guys…you think of the word ‘hott’ with two t’s" don’t get much of a laugh out of me. Bacus slings many, many, many jokes, similar to the countless gags in the movie Airplane. In her case, while some are good, most are weak and corny. There’s quite a variety in the supporting characters; unfortunately, they are also clichéd. Some, like Tressa’s feisty and outrageous grandmother and her devoted suitor, still wind up endearing and hilarious. Others, like a dense-headed competitor food vendor and his Mafia-wannabes twin sons, are just absurd and over-the-top villains.

Books in a series can certainly spark a reader’s interest in the next book as well as the previous ones. Sadly, Calamity Jayne Rides Again didn’t so for me.

Reviewed by Jeanne W
Grade : C-
Book Type:

Sensuality: Subtle

Review Date : August 19, 2006

Publication Date: 2006

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