Friday, September 20, 2002

Bubbles Unbound by Sarah Strohmeyer features hairstylist/journalist Bubbles Yablonsky. Bubbles is a divorced single mother of Jane, an 17 year old going on 30, teenager. She knows there is more to life than doing hair in Lehigh, Pennsylvania. She goes back to school, enters journalism classes and gets a job at a local newspaper for on-the-job training. When Bubbles stumbles upon a crime scene on the way home from an assignment, she's suddenly up to her roots in a nasty murder investigation. Plus can she resist Stiletto who keeps leaving her hanging. Very reminiscent of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mysteries. Fun, light and entertaining.

In the sequel Bubbles in Trouble, Bubbles goes undercover to track down her friend Janice who left her fiance at the alter to go back to Amish country. No more make-up and high heals for Bubbles as she dones her plain dresses and braids her hair and she discovers that not all as it appears in Whoopee, PA. Of course there is the sexual tension between her and Stiletto, and will he finally pop the question. Read and find out.

Bubbles ablaze
Bubbles a broad

Bubbles Betrothed

Bubbles Yablonsky has hung up her curling iron for good, the ex-hairdresser and takes her new career seriously. The Lehigh News-Times reporter is willing to risk a contempt-of-court charge rather than surrender the notes from her interview with accused murderer Julia "Crazy Popeye" Simon. Popeye's poisoning in her jail cell makes the police think maybe she didn't kill high school principal Rudolph Schmidt, even though podiatrist Cerise May found the bag lady in her waiting room with her hands down the administrator's throat. And they think Bubbles's notebook may help them find out who did kill Schmidt, and whether the killing is connected to May's ex-boyfriend, Polish mafioso Karol Smolak.

Of course, keeping her mother Lulu out of trouble and helping daughter Jane fill out her application to Princeton take up most of Bubbles's spare time, so it isn't until the judge fines her $1,000 per minute until her notes resurface that she decides she'd better find out who killed Schmidt. But Bubbles doesn't reckon with the biggest distraction of all: AP photographer Steve Stiletto, who plunks a diamond on her finger and asks her to pretend to be his fiancée so he doesn't get sent to London.

Typical crazy murder and mayhem follow Bubbles where ever she goes. The whole fake engagement was kind of annoying and really didn't add much to the story. Bubbles is always fun but I miss her salon days.