Alice's Review: Ros

Summary:  When a plane crashed behind Micki Cramer's house, in San Diego, California, she kept waiting for the sirens and rescue team to show up. As the first responder, it was up to her to tug on the arm that was waving out of the broken wreckage. Holding her breath against the choking smoke, she managed to get the pilot out and carry him to safety into her backyard. He wasn't that heavy; he was about the size of her 10-year-old nephew, who did play a lot of video games and ate nothing but Flamin' Hot Cheetos, but still. As it turns out, he wasn't a guy after all.  Ros, the pilot, was on a mission to find her missing brother who had crash-landed at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Seems she was a bad driver, too, missing her target by nearly a thousand miles and more than half a century.  If Ros can teach Micki how to use eleven percent of her brain, how can Micki help Ros?

Review:  Aliens?  Really?  Aliens aren’t my thing.  Had I read the summary a little closer and used my rusty powers of deduction, I would have realized this and passed on this read.   If I had, it would have taken me a lot longer to discover Dee DeTarsio.   Although this wasn’t what I expected, I really enjoyed reading Ros. 

Ms. DeTarsio used the classic formula that has made Janet Evanovich’s Plum series so wildly successful.  Although not very original, it is very funny.  This novel centers on Ros but the real star for me is Micki, our protagonist extraordinaire.  She handled everything with a sense of humor, kookiness, and blind courage.  With every mishap, I laughed harder.  I love that she competes at yoga, thinks about sex and food at the most inappropriate times, and puts her life on the line for someone out of this world. She’s pretty great. 

Ms. DeTarsio is a natural storyteller.  It was very easy to get wrapped up this adventure.  I read this on Kindle and there were times I was so engrossed I would forget it was an eBook.  I would actually try to manually flip the pages.  Ms. DeTarsio is a sneaky one too.  She’d throw in little nuggets when I least expected it.  My favorite was when Rhoda says, “Life is 75 percent maintenance.”  So true.  It’s the other 25 percent that counts.  And I’m glad I used part of my 25 percent on Ros.

Final Take: 4/5