I read the Penelope Blue series a few weeks ago now (I know, I seriously need to get better at reviewing books at the time of reading them) and I knew I wanted to tell you about the series as soon as I finished because I loved these books but also I didn’t know how to do it without spoiling things completely. As such, I knew the only way to tell you about it was to give you the highlights of the books for me.
Stealing Mr Right - Tamara Morgan
Published: 7th March 2017
I'm a wanted jewel thief.
He's FBI.
What's that saying? Keep your friends close...and your husband closer.
Being married to a federal agent certainly has its perks.
1. I just love the way that man looks in a suit.
2. This way I always know what the enemy is up to.
Spending my days lifting jewels and my nights tracking the Bureau should have been a genius plan. But the closer I get to Grant Emerson, the more dangerous this feels. With two million dollars' worth of diamonds on the line, I can't afford to fall for my own husband.
It turns out that the only thing worse than having a mortal enemy is being married to one. Because in our game of theft and seduction, only one of us will come out on top.
Good thing a cat burglar always lands on her feet.
The characters
Not just our main couple, Penelope and Grant, but also the secondary characters from Penelope’s little gang of thieves, to her step mom and family. All of them were spectacular. I don’t think a single character felt underdeveloped. I don’t want to say too much about all of the characters because they could lead to spoilers but they were all amazing. Obviously Penelope Blue was going to be my favourite. She was funny and sassy and she wasn’t in anyway full of herself. This was a woman who had grown up stealing and was a skilled jewellery thief, but she just thought that was normal. She didn’t have an ego or come across as cocky but instead she was just a normal woman and that was her job. She wasn’t living in the lap of luxury and she wasn’t wasting her money on frivolous things. She wasn’t really spending her ill gotten gains on anything. She was the most normal jewellery thief known to man. And her hang go thieves? Yes, they definitely raised a few eyebrows with some of their hobbies but they were friends she’d had for years and they had her back, even if she occasionally forgot that. She had made her own family and these guys always had each other’s backs.
The romance
I admit, when I began the series I wasn’t even sure if it could strictly be categorised as romance given Grant and Penelope were married so very much in an established relationship at the beginning of the first book. But as the first book is told exclusively through Penelope’s POV you don’t get to see Grant’s thoughts and feelings and Penelope is convinced that Grant only married her to get close to her. She’s not sure if it’s to arrest her and her friends or if it’s related to her father, who was a master thief as well, but she is suspicious of him even though she knows she cares for him as well. I loved her reluctance to ever admit her feelings for Grant, especially to her friends. It made it hilarious to read that she didn’t love him yet you could see when she was worried or jealous of him.
The plot
Each of the books had a mystery element to it. The first was the mystery of what exactly Grant was up to and told the story through various flashbacks to establish how exactly Grant and Penelope ended up married. And then the next two had an FBI investigation which acted as the overarching mystery which Penelope managed to wrangle her involvement into with some mild reluctance from Grant. Penelope was hilarious and I loved seeing her nose her way into things and acting as detective (even though, sometimes, her actual instincts about people stunk). She had an overactive imagination which meant she often began to suspect the wrong person for rather weak reasons missing the obvious, but that’s what made it fun because you could understand why she had her suspicions about people.
No unnecessary relationship conflict
One thing I really enjoyed in the series was that never did it rely on creating unnecessary conflict in the relationships, be that in the romantic ones or platonic. Even in the later books when the relationship between Grant and Penelope was more certain, some long running series can rely upon doubts and mistrust driving a wedge between a couple and you didn't see that here. I hate when you have a couple doubting one another when in the previous book you saw how solid their romance was because that just makes me not believe the relationship. It was the same with Penelope and her friends, yes their relationship changed and developed through the series but when the conflict was resolved between them it wasn't revisited adnauseum. I think the thing I hate seeing is a lack of trust being played upon as a cheap plot device. You can use it once and it has to be convincing. It worked through the first book as Penelope's job wasn't exactly traditional or garner a lot of trust for people considering she was a jewellery thief. But that couldn't be used forever.
I can't really say there are any negatives to this series. Sure, sometimes I guessed the twists but it still managed to keep me on my toes and I was never bored reading them. It never felt repetitive as you saw the characters develop as the series progressed. Penelope's doubts were a focus for a while but they changed in each of the books as she found her place with Grant and with her friends.
I don't really feel like I've done the series justice but I really enjoyed it and I feel like these books really flew under the radar. I didn't see anyone talking about them when they came out and it's a travesty. Hopefully this might encourage someone else to read them too.
Have you read these books or have I convinced you to check them out?
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