“Actually you have a problem with Veronica, you’re pretty much dead to me so just like evaporate or something, I don’t know”

We last left Veronica Mars back in her hometown of Neptune, California, following (Spoilers for the VM movie) a case that involved her on again/off again/epic love interest Logan Echolls, a high school reunion for the ages, and some people with a grudge against her dad. Since that adventure, Veronica has decided to stay & work at Mars Investigations, but the beginning of The Thousand Dollar Tan Line finds that Spring Break in Neptune is not exactly old-home week.

There’s a distinct lack of casework (and lack of money); there’s Veronica & her dad not getting along like they should, as he’s worried that she’s throwing away her life by moving back to work with him as a PI; there’s aforementioned epic love interest Logan, and how to manage a long-distance relationship with a Navy pilot via horribly glitchy & hard to schedule Skype calls; there’s the always bumbling, and now pissed off sheriff; and now there’s two missing girls, and very few leads. And if one of the missing girls just happens to be a step-sister she didn’t know she had, making one of her new clients the mother who abandoned her over a decade ago,  well, doesn’t that just figure?

So here’s the thing – if you’re a Marshmallow, you don’t need me to convince you to read this, and if you’re not, I feel like we should sit down with Netflix, the beverage of your choice, and a few spare hours, because Why Aren’t You??? Veronica Mars is the best, and you need to watch it, and then you’ll just, automatically, want to continue consuming as much media in that universe as you possibly can.  Me? I’ll take all I can get – Movie? Yes. Horrifically unfulfilled pilot where Veronica is in the FBI? Yes. Books: Yes. Apparently ultra-meta webseries within a webseries that starts airing soon? Also yes. Gimme them all, because – aside form the awesome that is Veronica – there’s Wallace, and Mac, and Keith, and Logan, and Weevil (too little Weevil in this book, FYI) and even Dick, and I will spend as much time in their company as I can.

I did have a couple of quibbles with things here or there – Keith and Veronica’s relationship is one of the best father-daughter relationships I’ve ever seen on TV, and it pisses me off when they mess it up, even if they do it realistically, even if it makes sense for it to be messed up, because I really just want them to be best friends all the time. (I had similar problems with Gilmore Girls, when Lorelei and Rory would fight – “But… I don’t want them to!”) And also, it’s impossible to read it without Kristen Bell’s voice doing the narration in your mind: If they don’t have her doing the audio book for this thing, then it is a huge mistake. I just checked: she does, in fact, narrate the audio book, making the only huge mistake mine, in that I did not download it in the first place. But, I heard there will be a whole series of books (and there’s at least one other book listed for January release on Amazon), so I’ll know for the next one.