After dragging myself through some serious reading, I decided I wanted something light and easy to digest. Sitting on my shelf unread were the second and third books in the Spellman series. Humor is not a requirement for light reading, but it doesn’t hurt. The Spellmans have humor to spare, so I pulled both off the shelf and read them consecutively.

Curse of the Spellmans reads like an extended caper. When we left Isabel Spellman in The Spellman Files, she been establishing some independence from her private investigator parents, Albert and Olivia Spellman. After a very brief fling with him, Isabel investigates the hunky man next door, John Brown. She’s convinced he’s up to no good because of his suspiciously bland name and a locked office that he wouldn’t let her enter during their tryst.

Yeah, it’s that flimsy of a case. While we get all the Spellman antics including taping each other, GPS tracing each other, etc., I had a hard time getting around the idea that Izzy Spellman couldn’t a single locked door go. So she becomes quite stalkerish in her behavior in order to find out the truth. While the characters in the novel dislike Izzy’s behavior and do try to stop her, the humor treats it has annoying but effectively harmless.

That last sentence, I just realized while writing it. It’s changed my opinion of the book actually. Because all the cute things about Izzy now seem tied to her being a stalker. Hahahah! She gets caught on video breaking in to John Brown’s locked office. Hahahah! She assumes her brother cheated on her best friend. Hahah! Olivia Spellman vandalizes daughter Rae’s boyfriend’s motorcycle so Rae won’t ride it.

I was enjoying all of that while I read it, but now I feel dirty for it.