Note: Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and author Elle Cosimano for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

The idea of a zany female protagonist in impossible situations has been done repeatedly. Perhaps the best known is Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. It has inspired numerous copies. I think Elle Cosimano’s series about author Finlay Donovan, whose life careens into crazy territory,y is about the best.

Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice is the fourth book in the series. This is an ongoing story, and I don’t think you’ll enjoy it as much if you haven’t read the earlier books in the series. Go back right now and do that. I’ll wait. (Not really.)

This picks up following events in Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun. (There is a short story in between that book and this one that fills in some of Vero’s background.) It picks up almost immediately after, with Finlay and her nanny/friend Vero deciding to go to Atlantic City to rescue Vero’s boyfriend from the loan shark Vero owes money to. Their initial plan is to take the kids with them, and Finlay’s mother goes with them to watch them. Then Finlay’s ex-husband, Steve, gets wind of them traveling out of state. Per the divorce agreement, Finlay can’t take the kids out of state without his permission, so they also bring him along.

Once in Atlantic City, the women sneak off to follow a lead to locate Javier and a missing Aston-Martin. They end up coming across two dead bodies, including the loan shark that Vero owed money to. A young hacker named Cam, who has appeared in the series before, also turns up. He’s looking for a zip drive that has details of the Russian mob’s finances that could lead to their downfall. Unfortunately, there’s also information about Finlay and Vero. Soon, Finlay’s boyfriend, Nick, who is a police officer, turns up as well. He claims he’s chasing down a lead on the mob, but in reality, he’s worried about Finlay.

Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice is a crazy adventure as Finlay and Vero try to duck everyone and locate Javi and the zip drive before the FBI does. There’s no way this could happen in real life, but it’s fun to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the story. They repeatedly try to do the right thing and only make matters worse. There’s a lot of interaction between everyone that is laugh-out-loud fun. They come up with plans that don’t always pan out the way they want them to, but it’s fun to watch it all fall apart on them. I sat there thinking “oh, that’s not a good idea…” but, of course, they didn’t listen to me and plunged ahead anyway, causing chaos.

This is a fun book that is a good bit of escapism from the crazy world we live in. The main characters are likable. We get Finlay’s colorful family here, including her mother, who is angry at her father at the current time. This makes their accidental foray into a male strip club all the more hilarious. I also enjoyed the inclusiveness of Finlay’s sister, Georgia, who is a lesbian and a police officer and has a new girlfriend. I liked that she was accepted into the police force with few questions.

The one drawback is something that happens a lot of the time with these types of stories. There was once a skit on the old Carol Burnett Show where she was a soap opera star, and the kids were dumped into the literal umbrella stand until they were old enough to cause trouble themselves. That seems to be the case here with Finlay’s children. They spend the entire time either watching TV in their hotel room or getting kicked out of the hotel’s swimming pool. This happened in other stories in the series as well. It’s a small plot point that just doesn’t work for me.

Overall, I find this series to have the right degree of levity and escapism that I need right now, and I’m enjoying it. This book wraps up many of the ongoing stories in the series, so I can’t wait to see where Finaly and Vero go next. There’s plenty of fodder left over to start on some new misadventures.

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