Aboard the ship, Emily and company (including her lottery-winning Nana) sign up to hear a lecture by Dorian Smoker, the world’s foremost expert on the explorer Captain Cook. In the audience is a group of Englishmen who strongly disagree with the accolades given to Captain Cook, an anthropology student whose F from Professor Smoker led to her not graduating on time and Smoker’s research assistant, Bailey Howard.

Emily is stunned when one of her charges, retired Professor Tilly Hovick, announces she believes she has the diary from Captain Cook’s final, fateful and fatal voyage. Smoker agrees to look through the diary during the cruise, but before he gets a chance to spend any time with it, he falls overboard or was pushed.

Tilly assumes the book went over the side with the professor, but is pleased to announce she saved the treasure map that was tucked inside the book and that the X marking the spot is on the river the group is kayaking the next day. Unfortunately, someone else got a copy of the map and is selling it to other members of the excursion. Everyone returns to the ship thinking they’ve found the treasure, though Tilly is pretty sure she has the real one. A face full of pepper spray convinces Emily that she and the gang are on the right track.

Hula Done It is full of quirky characters, but none of them are particularly well-drawn. By the end of the book Emily has received three marriage proposals from three men she either doesn’t know well or hasn’t known for long. Uff da, as Emily would say, what is the attraction? Insider references to Emily’s grandmother being a lottery winner and to Emily’s transvestite ex-husband leave first timers to the series feeling as if they are missing out on something. Who pushed Dorian Smoker overboard is often forgotten, overshadowed by the river treasure hunt and a shipboard scavenger hunt. While there is an attempt at a clever twist at the end, readers may not be surprised by the outcome.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry