Seven Up had a new tempo to the plot. A slight twist to the formula, which was getting a little monotonous, gave some relief here. Also, for the first time, we got a reappearance from some of the previous side characters! It was nice to have Dougie and Mooner back for another round of stoner fun.

The Morelli-Ranger tension reaches a breaking point, and it’s nice to get a step back to keep the options open. And yet another excellent cliffhanger in this regard.

Grandma Mazur and Lula are solid as always. It was interesting to get a window into Stephanie’s life with her sister in town, and it’s nice to see her mum becoming more well rounded and a less stereotypical Jersey mum. I don’t think I’ve talked about Bob yet in a review, but he is by far my favourite, and I can only hope that this new Morelli chill will not keep Bob out of the story.

Overall, I am still enjoying this series; this was a solid instalment, and the narrative changed enough that it seemed less formulaic. However, it does still feel repetitive – FTA appears and gets away, talk to five people about it, FTA shows up again and escapes, let’s go back to those same five people and have the same conversation. Oh, and there’s the FTA again! And he got away! What should we do next?

My goal is to make it to the tenth book before needing a palate cleanser, and I think it should be easy to do if they keep being reasonably easy, enjoyable reads like this one was. Here’s hoping for a little more action and a little less non-stop fast food runs with a magical metabolism.