Monkey Business (Erica Jewell, #2) in Aussie Readers

Jan 17, 2014 Tracey rated it liked it

Shelves: 2014, romance, crime, australian, humour

I decided to give this book a try as part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge.
This is the second book in Ledson’s Erica Jewell series and if you have not read the first book (I have not) you can read this novel as a standalone without any problems.
Erica Jewell is a part-time vigilante and her on again/off again boyfriend Jack and his partner Joe have gone M.I.A on the island of Saint Sebastian. It is up to Erica to try and find them and bring them home but along the way she meets some co I decided to give this book a try as part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge.
This is the second book in Ledson’s Erica Jewell series and if you have not read the first book (I have not) you can read this novel as a standalone without any problems.
Erica Jewell is a part-time vigilante and her on again/off again boyfriend Jack and his partner Joe have gone M.I.A on the island of Saint Sebastian. It is up to Erica to try and find them and bring them home but along the way she meets some colourful characters, a whole stack of danger and an international black market in Tupperware.
Ledson’s writing is sharp, with great pace and she creates an interesting world. The descriptions of places such as Darwin were on the whole accurate and gave a great feel to novel. The book is easy to read because Ledson has a great way of making you feel the story is aimed directly at you. The writing keeps you going but to be honest the story was lacking.
I have no problem suspending disbelief, when I read a book that is what I want. I want the fantastical, the humour, the over top the situations that just do not seem plausible in real life. You get a lot of that in this book and that may have been part of the problem as to why it does not work. There were too many over the top situations that bogged the narrative down. It was great to read Australian Football references, even if it was the dreaded Collingwood! Yet I was wondering why this was included and the zoo picnic. I kept expecting it to be part of some secret mission but no, just an excuse for Erica to go on about Jack.
I really struggled to connect with the main character Erica Jewell. I realised I had made chapter 8 and all I had read was the he loves/loves me not. In fact Erica seemed to be only able to do a couple of things really well and they were having wet dreams about Jack naked, overthink their relationship status and cry. Far out Erica can cry she must break down and have a good bawl every four or five pages. Then when she finally gets motivated to go and find Jack and his partner, well I started to wonder just what, if any skills she had. Erica pretty much stumbles around asks dumb questions, blunders into danger and trusts everyone. Having said I did like Erica’s attitude to life and her zany approach.
The love of Erica’s life is of course Jack and he is the strong and ever so silent type. There is enough chemistry between them on the page but I really did not feel emotionally invested as to whether they ended up together or not.
I did take issue with Erica early on was a throw away abut Jack’s former wife. It actually comes across as quite heartless when she explains Jack was late for breakfast with his parents and wife who were at the World Trade Towers on 11 September. Erica says she was personally glad he had missed the appointment. I know she was happy to have him but at the loss of three people seems a bit cruel.
This is a fun read and Erica has a great deal of promise as a main character. Do not get into the Stephanie Plum comparisons as Erica is her own woman.
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Dec 18, 2013 Bree T rated it liked it

Shelves: arc, australian, contemporary, crime, aww2013, humour

Her first mission with the mysterious outfit known as the Team is over and Erica Jewell is in a state of limbo – in more ways than one. Life has mostly returned to normal now other than the fact that she’s not really sure what’s going on between her and the enigmatic Jack Jones. Jack has already suffered a painful loss in his life and he’s not willing to get close to anyone again, in case that puts them in danger. And so Erica wonders exactly where they stand.

Jack has a mission he needs to go on Her first mission with the mysterious outfit known as the Team is over and Erica Jewell is in a state of limbo – in more ways than one. Life has mostly returned to normal now other than the fact that she’s not really sure what’s going on between her and the enigmatic Jack Jones. Jack has already suffered a painful loss in his life and he’s not willing to get close to anyone again, in case that puts them in danger. And so Erica wonders exactly where they stand.

Jack has a mission he needs to go on – he won’t say much but Erica gets the feeling it’s quite a dangerous one. And then she receives a garbled call from Joe, Jack’s right hand man that suggests that Jack has gone missing in action. With the Team turning a blind eye, Erica decides that if anyone is going to rescue Jack, it’s going to have to be her. Jack is on the Indonesian island of St Sebastian, a small jungle-infested hot mess of instability and corruption. Erica takes some personal leave and makes her way there without a clue of what Jack was up to or how to find him. At best all she can do is stumble around asking questions and hope that she hits on someone that has an idea what she’s talking about – and might be willing to help her.

Monkey Business is the follow up to Kathryn Ledson’s debut novel Rough Diamond which was published last year. Rough Diamond introduced us to Erica Jewell who was working in a boring job to pay off her former husband’s debts when she discovered the bleeding Jack Jones in her garden. An operative for an elite and privately funded unit, Jack recruited Erica to do some of the more mundane work for the job he was on, countering terrorism attacks on Australian soil. Now Erica works casually for the same operation when required and although there’s an obvious attraction with Jack, nothing concrete has been established. Erica knows that he will have dangerous missions to complete and probably often be away.

I enjoyed the first book but I had some reservations and a few things didn’t work for me and the same can probably be said of this installment. There are some things that I think are quite interesting and I do feel that firstly, Erica does undergo some development of character here. In the first book she’s an average person with no idea about units such as the Team but in this one she has knowledge and she has determination. When Jack goes missing, there was never any chance that she wouldn’t go after him personally, once it became obvious to her that the leader of the Team was going to deny any knowledge/responsibility. It seems to work similar to the CIA – if you get caught, you don’t exist. So she books a flight to Darwin and from there to ‘St Sebastian’, an island covered in jungle. She really has no idea what she’s doing but a fortuitous meeting in Darwin with a former university friend at least gives her one contact to make on the island. Mostly she just wanders around asking anyone if they’ve seen Jack and being driven by a taxi driver who is a master at the game of ripping people off.

For me, the first half of this book unfolds rather slowly with a lot of seemingly unnecessary scenes: the football scene at the MCG, which serves to only give Erica’s insecurity about her status with Jack yet another voice, the drunken scene at her friend Lucy’s place where Erica writes herself off for no apparent reason at a Tupperware party and there are probably several others. There’s also a lot of ridiculous stuff involving Tupperware that I’m not really going to get into because it’s partially a spoiler and also because it just….seemed silly. I understand these sorts of books often contain over the top humour that verges into the crazy and you need to check reality at the door upon reading it but apparently I have more difficulty doing that than I imagined.

Fortunately, the second half of the book is much stronger, once Erica actually locates Jack and then they have to get off the island. They have a lot of things to contend with and there is a huge emotional factor as well – Jack isn’t pleased that a) Joe rang Erica to tell her that he was missing and b) that Erica took it upon herself to come here and put herself in deliberate danger for him. Jack has a bit of a problem with Erica being a target for danger but all I can say about that is well buddy, maybe you shouldn’t have nearly bled to death in her front yard and then involved her in the Team. You’ve only got yourself to blame for that one! However I kind of like the way he is expresses his frustration and disappointment about finding Erica in the jungle mixed with the fact that he’s glad to see her in a way as well. At the times the two of them have a really nice dynamic and it seems at the moment that it’s not going to be a forever are-they-or-aren’t-they type of relationship, which is rather refreshing because we all know that can go on way too long…

All in all, Monkey Business is a bit of a mixed bag for me. There were parts I liked and as I mentioned, the second half of the book is quite good. But a lot of the first part of the book had my attention wandering a lot and most of the story didn’t really work for me. There’s a third Erica Jewell book in the works and I am still interested to see where it goes. I’d like to see more of the Team and what they do, rather than have Erica mostly isolated from them, if the Team is going to be a part of the books. ...more

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Nov 17, 2013 Shelleyrae at Book'd Out rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc-are, netgalley-reviews, aussie-author, provided-by-publisher

A sequel to Ledson's debut novel, Rough Diamond, Monkey Business sees Jack Jones heading out on another clandestine mission while Erica agonises over the status of their relationship and grows increasingly restless when he fails to return. When Erica realises Jack, and Joe, are actually missing-in-action and no one is willing to help him, she decides to go after him, flying to the troubled island of St Sebastian, where she quickly becomes entangled in some dangerous monkey business.

While I enjoy ...more

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