The King's Ransom Volume 2: A Novel
4.5 | 135 ratings
Price: 16.4
Last update: 11-30-2025
Top reviews from the United States
- VH in PASo much fun from Janet EvanovichJanet Evanovich is a master of creating consistently fun, quirky characters who possess that electric, undeniable chemistry. The King's Ransom is no exception, delivering the signature blend of action, humor, and witty banter we've come to expect. The plot moves at a breakneck pace, and the recurring cast of misfits truly shines. Love Jim!
The only negative for me was the excessive brand name dropping. Is that all paid product placement? - KgreerOutstanding!I loved this story! It has great writing, fast paced action, wild and crazy characters, murder and mystery, and laughter and romance thrown into the mix to make it a great read.
- lynguy1Engaging and Fast-PacedJanet Evanovich returns with the second novel in the Gabriela Rose series, The King’s Ransom. This global action-adventure and mystery story is full of suspense, some humor, kidnappings, and much more. Gabriela is an expert at recovering lost treasures, stolen heirlooms, and missing assets. She’s often hired in suspected insurance fraud cases as well as by individuals and companies. But her latest job is brought to her by her ex-husband Rafer Janes and his cousin, Harley Patch. As president of a large private bank, Harley invested a significant amount of money in insuring many of the world’s priceless artifacts at the urging of his board. But recently, those insured pieces have been stolen and there’s no paper trail of Harley being directed to make the risky investments. He’s been suspended and unless the assets can be recovered soon, he is likely to go to jail. Harley and Rafer insist on accompanying her as the investigation takes her from New York City to London to Cairo to Florida to Italy.
Gabriela is reliable, curious, cool under pressure, weapons and martial arts trained, and driven to succeed. She has excellent reflexes and is tenacious. She also has an aptitude for searching and finding things and loves the thrill of exploring the unknown. Rafer owns a dive shop, tends to drink too much, and seems to lack ambition. While they still have a lot of chemistry, they also spend a lot of time bickering. Harley is social and great at chatting, but he’s not so great at thinking through the ramifications of his actions on a business level (such as insuring assets well beyond what the bank the cover if all are lost). Readers are also introduced to Ahmed El Ghaly working at the Egyptian embassy. Will he appear in future books?
Full of humor and vividly written, this novel grabbed my attention quickly. The premise is great and the story is over-the-top adventure. There’s plenty of action, danger, murder, and suspense in the story, and we get a little more character depth for Gabriela and Rafer in this novel. They’re becoming more dynamic characters in this second novel in the series. Readers also see how far into the grey line Gabriela and Rafer are willing to go to save Harley. There are also some romantic sparks between Gabriela and Rafer and there’s chemistry with her and Ahmed. I liked the ending with a thread that could be developed for the next book in the series.
Overall, this is an engaging, fast-paced, and entertaining action-adventure story full of murder, corruption, threats, kidnapping and a multi-layered global conspiracy. If you can just enjoy the over-the-top scenarios and not try to make them something more substantial, it’s an enjoyable read. Also, Gabriela is completely different from Stephanie Plum so readers should expect significant differences.
Atria Books and Janet Evanovich provided a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. The publication date is currently set for November 11, 2025. - Julie D (Audio and Book Jewels)Janet Evanovich and Lorelei King keep me listening!!!This book is excellent.. like all of Janet Evanovich’s books. I loved this story. I’m happy to have more of her books and the premise of this series is interesting and keeps me reading/listening.
Lorelei King is fun to listen to and is perfect t for these characters! - Lois FisherAdventure never looked so fun!Gabriela Rose finds "things" for nice compensation. The Rosetta Stone. Lots of paintings. A coffin of a maybe brother of King Tut named Brendan. She comes across dastardly unknown criminals trying to thwart her efforts. But along with her ex-husband, Rafer, and Rafer's adorable, dim bulb cousin, Harley, and a few terrific characters from London to New York to Cairo to Italy, Gabs pushes through. Adventure galore, not much gore, and Ms. Evanovich's wonderful witty dialogue, this 2nd installment of The Recovery Agent series is a total winner. Highly recommended!
- Blue EyesGabriella is helping her ex-husband , Rafe and his cousin, HarleyHarley, who is handsome and charming but very naive, was in charge of insuring valuable items for a bank. Upon the current bank president’s murder, Harley was made for president and he was still in charge of the insurance. Then within about a two week period all of the large value items that he had insured were stolen in the bank did not have enough money to cover The insurance payments. So Harley was in big trouble and Gabriella was asked by her ex-husband to help find the missing items. The first item was the Rosetta Stone, and this item was right there easily found. The next item was a solid gold funeral casket from a lesser known half brother of King Tut. The search for this item took 3/4 of the book with some high action and some boring parts.
Not my favorite Janet Evanovich book - kdnagelA fun adventure.The recovery agent series is fun with lots of tougne-in-cheek humor. The story moves along at a good clip and keeps the reader guessing.