Rocky Road To Romance is a pre-Plum novel by popular American author, Janet Evanovich. It is the fourth book in the Elsie Hawkins series, on whom, Evanovich says, Grandma Mazur was modelled. Fans of the Plum series will be interested to know that in this book, the prototype for Bob the Dog makes an appearance.

When the traffic reporter on station WZZZ breaks his leg, Daisy Adams asks her hunky boss, Steve Crow, if she can have the job. Daisy has quite a bit on her plate already: she’s looking after her younger brother, volunteering as a crossing guard and in a nursing home, doing a paper run, studying to defend her doctorate dissertation and doing a recipes-for-dogs spot on WZZZ. Soon after she starts the traffic reporting, she accidentally runs down a drug dealer. This seems to bring down quite a bit of misfortune onto her head.

Steve Crow has already fallen for this quirky woman, and decides she needs protection: Elsie Hawkins signs on as a bodyguard for Daisy. This final Elsie Hawkins instalment features the prototypes for Grandma Mazur, Uncle Sandor’s powder-blue Buick, the gun in the handbag and Bob the dog. There’s a firebomb, a few car chases and plenty of sweet romance.