Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review.
Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, a book I’m having a hard time slotting into a particular genre, isn’t going to rock your world, but you will probably have a good to great time with it. Just a solid, fun little book that tweaks your emotions a tad every now and then. I guess let’s call it cozy crime/adventure. It’s not a mystery, not a thriller, not (despite what the title implies) a revenge story (any revenge Mrs. Plansky gets is sort of accidental).
A wealthy older woman is scammed by a Romanian crime gang and all of her money stolen (never use the same password across multiple accounts!), and instead of just accepting it as most people do, she decides to get her money back on her own. (This is actually a spoiler and doesn’t happen until halfway through the book, but it’s in the synopsis, so . . . ) We also follow the young Romanian man named Dinu (not sure of spelling, listened to the audio) who did the scamming. It’s his uncle’s crime gang, and we get a fairly nuanced look at how someone like him could be persuaded to scam lonely old people despite being a fairly good person.
Mrs. Plansky is resourceful and determined with a good head on her shoulders, so it’s fun to follow her as she tracks down her money and tries to get it back (although there is a bit of the bumbling accidental spy sort of trope in here as well, where things happen more accidentally than they would in real life). Dinu is a poor kid with a shitty family. It also gets a wee bit sexy, as part of seventy-two year old widow Mrs. Plansky’s journey is to meet a dashing foreign journalist who is investigating cybercrime in the country, and he takes to her pretty much right away.
I would definitely recommend this one if you’re looking for something easy to read and on the more heartwarming side of this type of story (whatever type that is?).