#CBR12 Book 11: "Trust Me on This" by Jennifer Crusie

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Official book description:
Dennie Banks is an investigative reporter chasing down the biggest story of her career. Alec Prentice is a government agent working undercover to catch an elusive grifter. When they meet by accident, it’s a case of mistaken identities at first sight. What they don’t mistake is the instant attraction they have for each other, an attraction they’ll do everything in their power to resist—because Dennie thinks that Alec is running interference for her interview subject, and Alec suspects that Dennie is linked to his swindler. As the confusion grows, so do their feelings for each other, and what begins as a romantic comedy of errors may just end in the love affair of a lifetime. 

This book was a quick, fun read, with several cases of mistaken identity and a lot of silliness taking place in a hotel over the course of a weekend. The protagonists are both likable and good at what they do (although I wasn't entirely sure why Dennie thought her entire career would be made by interviewing this one woman that she keeps pursuing) and there's also a nice secondary romance between the main two supporting characters, who are middle-aged.

I would have liked it if the romance wasn't quite so instantaneous, the couples really don't spend a lot of time together at all before apparently, they're madly in love with one another (yup, this is the case in both the primary and secondary romance). I would have liked more build-up and banter, as it was, the relationships seemed almost pre-destined, as the characters met, sparked, bantered a tiny bit, fell into bed with on another and decided this was their HEA, all in one weekend. With all the various storylines being juggled, neither romance gets enough focus.

A while back, I still had a bunch of Crusie's early romances on my TBR list, all purchased in e-book sales over the years, usually only rediscovered when the book in question fit into one of my reading challenges. Having finished this, I think I may only have one or two of Crusie's back catalogue left unread. As her books tend to be, this was an entertaining read, which I got through in only a day r two- unlike her really classic contemporaries, however, this book was nothing very remarkable either, but I think she managed her goal of creating a screwball comedy rather well.


Judging a book by its cover: Anyone thinking that this book will have a serious canine presence based on the cover, will be sorely disappointed. Our intrepid heroine DOES own a dog, who she thinks about a lot and mentally asks for advice a few times, but the two are separated for much of the story, and placing the adorable doggo front and centre on the book is rather misleading.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 28: "What the Lady Wants" by Jennifer Crusie

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3 stars

From Goodreads:
Mitch Peabody was learning pretty fast that the life of a private detective was nothing like the movies. He'd envisioned a world of tough-talking detectives and smart-mouthed, stunning dames. Instead he saw case after case of cheating husbands, suspicious wives and unsuspecting mistresses until she walked through the door. Right down to her stilettos, Mae Sullivan was a knockout with a lethal body–and a lethal family to go with it. 

There was something not quite on the up-and-up about her, but she came with a case he couldn't afford to refuse and left him with a case of lust he hadn't had since high school. It didn't take long for him to fall for her, hook, line and sinker. But was Mae interested only in catching the double-crossing crooks who murdered her uncle or did the lady want to catch him?

This is yet another book that has languished on my TBR list for years and years because I got it in an e-book sale and then forgot about it. Jennifer Crusie has written some of my favourite amusing comfort reads, so every time I see one of her early books on sale that I don't already own, I get it. I don't necessarily feel any pressing need to read it right away, though, and so it likely gets forgotten about until it fits into some reading challenge or other that I'm doing, in this case, the Monthly Keyword Challenge.

This is also another book that while it was fun and diverting while I read it, is reduced from four to three stars by the time I review it, since I can barely remember the name of the protagonists less than three months later, let alone the intricacies of the plot (of which, there are a lot in this book, to be fair). Mitch Peabody works as a private detective (but only because of a bet, and as long as he can make a certain amount of money from his last job this year, he'll win and whichever judgmental friend and/or relative he was betting with (see, I really do NOT remember the finer details here or what Mitch used to do for a living before he became a PI) will be proved wrong. His possibly last case as a detective arrives in the form of bombshell Mae Sullivan, who needs to find the diary of her dead uncle. She won't tell Mitch WHY the diary is so important, though and as he starts investigating, it becomes clear that while it seems like the uncle died of natural causes, there were a LOT of people around with a motive to kill him.

Mae wanted a private detective she could easily manipulate, but Mitch proves to be not only much better at his job than she was hoping, but more attractive than she's entirely comfortable with. Since everyone seems to either fancy Mae or want to aggressively protect her, she doesn't seem unused to male attention. She's not very nice to Mitch to begin with, and he's downright rude to her. It's not a great basis for a romance, but I think it's supposed to evoke that old timey Hollywood banter, and a lot of (crazy, wrong) people seem to absolutely adore the verbal abuse that Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn fling at each other in Bringing Up Baby, so what do I know?

The uncle who died was only one of Mae's influential and scary uncles. There's no end to the threats Mitch gets while he's working for and with her. He's stubborn, though, so it just makes him more determined to solve the case and win Mae over.

There's a truly ludicrous amount of twists and turns in the case. For quite a bit of the book, it's really not clear whether Mae's uncle died of natural causes or was murdered. If he was murdered, Mae is one of the chief suspects, but there's a lot of other candidates who might have offed him too. The mystery part of the story was probably more satisfying than the romance, but as I said, I had fun while I read it, and got through it in less than a day, so while it's not going to join the Crusie novels I re-read every now and then, I also don't regret paying money for it.

Judging a book by its cover: I genuinely don't even know what's going on with this visual assault of pastels and various fonts. So much yellow and pink, it's like an Easter basket. The original cover appears to have a film noir vibe with cartoony silhouettes against the window in the door of a detective's office, which seems a lot more appropriate. Disembodied leg and lady carrying a briefcase doesn't exactly scream light hearted detective romp, or romance, for that matter.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 51: "Charlie All Night" by Jennifer Crusie

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Alice "Allie" McGuffey is the best radio producer WBBB in Tuttle, Ohio has ever had and it's pretty much the unspoken truth that she's the reason the radio station runs as well as it does. She loves her job and thrives on it, so when the radio station's current Drivetime star, Mark King, who up until two months ago was her lover, tells her that she's been moved to a different time slot, and from now on, he'll be using Lisa, her former intern as his producer, Allie is not happy. It's not like Bill Bonner, the radio station's owner would be fool enough to fire her (the place would go under), but she's been relegated to the 10pm-2am slot, previously occupied by a conspiracy nut who ended his career at the station two weeks earlier by shooting up the console. Angry and hurt, she walks into the local bar, determined to pick up someone, anyone who can make her forget about Mark.

Allie is not going to be broken. She has a plan. First she's going to find someone to sleep with, who will make her forget about Mark King once and for all. Then she's going to make her new DJ so famous that the station owner will beg her forgiveness and give her any choice producing gig she wants. Of course, the man she sits down next to and propositions is none other than Charlie Tenniel, the station's new DJ. Except, unbeknownst to anyone but Bill Bonner and his wife, Charlie has no radio experience whatsoever. He's there as a favour to Mr. Bonner because Charlie's father and Bill are old friends, and there have been some threatening letters sent to WBBB. Charlie is just going to pose as a DJ (borrowing the reputation of Ten Tenniel, his drug-dealing DJ brother) while he investigates the threats. He's unlikely to stay in Tuttle for more than about six weeks, and therefore isn't exactly looking to make an impression.

Yet Allie is so charming and determined, and after being invited to dinner with her and her gay roommate Joe, Charlie goes against his better judgement and agrees to stay on their sofa. And when Allie later at night asks him to seduce her, he initially tries to refuse, but when she persists, he doesn't resist for long. She also tells him about her plan to make him a big name in Tuttle, something he adamantly refuses to agree to. Nevertheless, despite his continued attempts to make bad and boring radio broadcasts, he keeps getting more and more listeners, and despite promising himself he's not going to stay on the sofa and not keep ending up in Allie's bed every night, the two continue their trysts. That is, until they inadvertently reveal their fledgling relationship on air, and make a public bet to stay celibate, both determined to prove that their gender is better at going without sex. They will need to spend their days keeping their hands off each other and their nights sleeping apart.

Of course, getting to know one another better, without allowing sex into the equation builds up the tension between them to an unbearable degree and makes them aware of how compatible they are on all sorts of other levels too. But Charlie was never meant to stay in Tuttle for too long, what will Allie do when and if he actually leaves?

This is yet another romance I got in an e-book sale absolutely ages ago and never got round to reading. Jennifer Crusie tends to write really enjoyable and fast-paced contemporaries, and I have yet to come across one I didn't enjoy. For someone who's struggling with involuntary infertility, it's nice to read books where there is no pregnancy epilogues, and in several of her books, the heroines aren't interested in ever having children. Her heroine are always smart and capable, and frequently not in the first blush of youth. Allie is 36, and actually two years older than Charlie, the hero. She's extremely good at her job, but not to an unbelievable degree and it's clear that she's had to make sacrifices along the way and that her best friend and roommate, Joe, is actually worried about how much of her self-worth and identity is tied up in her job at the radio station. She's clearly never had a particularly satisfying romantic or sexual relationship, and seems more upset about losing her job as Mark King's producer than by the fact that he dumped her two months' earlier. A little bit too career driven, she needs some distractions.

We're never given a clear back story for Charlie, except that he's not really one for settling down and seems never to stay in one place for too long. I don't think he's actually a detective, even though he's sent to Tuttle to help investigate a suspected threat, and it seems as if his nomadic lifestyle is quite a frustration to his parents. Strangely, his brother seems to be much more of a black sheep, having been arrested for drug-dealing and quite possibly also left a pregnant wife behind when he fled to whereabouts unknown. Quick to adapt and very charming, Charlie becomes a popular and proficient DJ, even though he tries his very best to remain unnoticed. He feels very protective of Allie and keeps doing his best to make Mark jealous, since the guy never appreciated her when he had her.

As is also the case with a lot of Crusie novels, there is a dog as part of the plot, in this case a tiny runt of a puppy, near death, who has to be hand-reared back to health by various radio station employees. While Charlie initially believes the puppy, Samson, to be a goner, he sees how invested Allie is in making it eat and survive and through the determined efforts of most of the various night time DJs and hourly feedings over several weeks, the puppy pulls through and becomes something of a mascot for Charlie and the radio station.

Crusie says in her introduction of the book that she wanted to see what a relationship that started with a one night stand and later became less physical might look like and in this book she basically has lovers to friends to lovers once more and manages it excellently. This is a really quick read, with a great main couple and a lot of fun and quirky supporting characters. I'm so glad I finally read it and really should do my best to chase down the rest of the books I have left unread in Crusie's back catalogue.

Judging a book by its cover: This book has a pretty cute and fairly simple cover. Two sets of lower legs and feet, belonging to people who are clearly snuggling up together. I'm going to assume that they're on some sort of giant blanket on the floor, because no bed I've ever seen has that much room at the foot of the bed once two grown humans are lying down on it. I'd say that perhaps they were half sitting, but the angle of the legs is all wrong for that. Still, as romance covers go, not bad at all.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 90: "Tell Me Lies" by Jennifer Crusie

Page count: 464 pages
Rating: 4 stars

MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE PLOT OF THIS BOOK IN THE REVIEW:

Maddie Faraday is cleaning out her husband's car and discovers a pair of women's underpants under the seat that certainly aren't hers. This isn't the first time he's cheated on her, and she decides that enough is enough. Even though she knows her mother and much of their little town will be utterly scandalised if she files for divorce, she just cannot take it any more. That C.L, the cute guy she lost her virginity in high school has just appeared in town again, looking gorgeous and available just makes her wonder further about the wrong choices she feels she's taken in life.

As Maddie contacts a lawyer (in the town over, so it'll take longer for her snoopy mother to discover what she's done) and starts trying to gather proof of her husband's financial assets, she finds that not only was her husband cheating on her, he seems to have been cheating his clients and has huge amounts of cash in a safe deposit box in the bank, as well as passports for himself and their daughter, along with plane tickets to Brazil. Then her husband turns up dead, and Maddie is suddenly the main suspect in a murder case.

When Jennifer Crusie is good, she's very good indeed. I adore Welcome to Temptation and am very fond of Bet Me, Faking It and Agnes and the Hitman. Crusie more often than not writes after a certain formula. There will be a smart-mouthed heroine, a love of food, often overbearing or controlling mothers, an adorable plot moppet and a cute, unconventional-looking dog involved in the story. The other books of hers that I've read don't tend to feature married heroines, but rather single women who find their happily ever after over the course of the book, after much hijinks has ensued.

Here, Maddie is married, but not happily so. This brings me to one of the things I wasn't all that happy with about the book. The adultery aspect. She's upset because she's caught her husband cheating, and not for the first time. Having always been the good girl, the one who does the right thing, Maddie has never done anything entirely for herself since the time she seduced C.L in high school, and then promptly broke his heart by ignoring him for the rest of their time in school. He's never been able to forget her, and is more than happy to step in and comfort Maddie when she's seething about her husband. Since Crusie suddenly decides to make this more than a farcical romp by introducing a murder in the middle of the plot, I would have been SO much happier if SPOILER! Maddie had waited until after her cheating, wife-beating piece of shit husband was dead before she decided to sleep with C.L as revenge. Two wrongs do not make a right. Cheating on your cheating spouse just makes you as bad as they are.

As well as some questionable judgement in the revenge department, Maddie exhibits some TSTL moments after her husband has been murdered, and it's clear that someone is trying to frame her for his death. Despite these plot niggles, after a somewhat slow start, where I was undecided, the book grabbed hold of me and I was pretty much unable to put it down until I got to the end. I read it the weekend I went to a friend's wedding, and actually wished I could have snuck the book with me to read during slower parts of the reception. Because of this, the book gets a full four stars. My enjoyment of the good parts were a lot greater than my annoyance at the less than great parts.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR2 Book 96: "Maybe This Time" by Jennifer Crusie

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 3 stars
Date begun: October 20th, 2010
Date finished: October 20th, 2010

Andie Miller is about to get married to a nice, reliable writer, the complete opposite of her ex-husband North Archer. She just needs to sever any remaining connection to him by handing back all the alimony checks she's received since their divorce ten years earlier. Then she can get on with her life. Of course, seeing North again brings back all sorts of memories, and he's a very hard man to say no to.

North Archer is responsible for two young children. His cousin died two years ago, and the kids were orphaned. Once their aunt died, the kids were left alone in a huge mansion in the countryside in Ohio, with only nannies and an elderly housekeeper to take care of them. The third nanny just quit, claiming the house is haunted. She tried to take the children away from the house, but the little girl had a near-psychotic break and the boy was expelled from boarding school for setting fires. He needs someone sensible, stubborn and capable to sort out the children, get their grades up to scratch, and convince them to move in with him. Who better than his ex-wife Andie, who could always sort out anything? That this will take her away from her fiancee for an extended period of time is really just a bonus.

As North offers her ten thousand dollars to spend a month in the old house, Andie really doesn't feel she can refuse. She starts to wonder if she shouldn't have asked for more money once she sees the house and meets the inhabitants, though. The house is an old Victorian mansion, moved brick by brick from England, with furniture and brickabrack included. The driveway is falling apart, the garden is overgrown. The housekeeper is absolutely ancient, has lived there for most of her life, clearly drinks too much and refuses to listen to a thing Andie says until she hears the name Archer, forcing Andie to pretend she is still married to North. Carter, the little boy, barely speaks. Alice, a tiny, scrawny waif is more like a wild creature than a girl, and carries a mouldy, creepy doll with her everywhere. If Andie tries to make her do anything she doesn't want to, she screams hysterically at the top of her lungs.

While Andie finds Archer House unnerving and creepy, she is a practical and educated woman, and refuses to believe in any ghost nonsense. Even when she keeps seeing things out of the corner of her eye, Alice is clearly talking to someone in her room at night, when the rocking chair by Alice's bed seemingly rocks by itself and she keeps hearing voices as she drifts off to sleep at night. She also can't stop thinking about North all the time, and being in the run-down house means she keeps having to contact him for help. Then, just as she seems to be making progress, an unscrupulous reporter arrives on the doorstep with her ex-brother-in-law and a cameraman in tow, wanting to make a news feature on the "haunted house" and the poor, terrified orphans who live there.

Andie is similar to many of Jennifer Crusie's other heroines. Smart, self-sufficient, curvy, and in no desperate need for children of her own. She works as a teacher, but has never settled long in one place, having moved every year or so since her divorce to North. They got married after one day, and the marriage only lasted a year, before Andie bolted, as North puts it. She claims she couldn't take his neglect any longer, never seeing him because he worked sixteen-hour-days at his family's law firm. Now she is ready to move on, and marry the dependable Will, she just needs to sort out the Archer House mess, as she refuses to back down from the challenge.

North did not want to divorce Andie, and only suggested it because she seemed so unhappy. Still not over her after ten years, he has to acknowledge to himself that he sent her to Archer House to keep her in his life for a little bit longer, hoping that maybe something would happen to keep her from marrying the other guy. He's not entirely sure that Andie will stay with the kids for a whole month, as his experience is that she runs when things get tough.

Maybe This Time is first and foremost a ghost story, inspired by Henry James' classic The Turn of the Screw. Anyone reading it hoping for a fun and light-hearted romance like many of Crusie's other books (which I tend to adore) will be disappointed, as the romance is decidedly secondary to the suspense and ghost plot here. The kids have lived in their creepy house for a long time, surrounded by things that grown-ups don't believe in. They are not happy and cheerful and well-adjusted, having been orphaned, neglected and left to fend for themselves for far too long. There are actual ghosts in the story, and the majority of them are not nice. It's a good book, but in a different tone from most of Crusie's previous work, and I think I prefer her more easy-going romances to this one.

CBR2 Book 40: "Don't Look Down" by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer

Publisher: St Martin's Paperbacks
Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 2.5 stars
Date begun: March 28th, 2010
Date finished: March 29th, 2010

Lucy Armstrong is regretting letting her sleazeball of an ex-husband talk her into flying to Savannah to finish the last four days of filming some movie he's stunt coordinator on. She wanted to see her sister and five-year-old niece, but so far her sister Daisy seems worn-down and strung-out, and her niece Pepper is manically pretending that nothing is wrong with the grown-ups around her. The movie set is a mess, the previous director died, most of the crew have quit, the stunts Lucy is supposed to film don't seem to fit into the rest of the narrative at all, her ex seems to think this a good time to get back in her good graces, and the star has hired some ex-Green Beret, who no one else wants on set, to be his stuntman.

Captain J.T. Wilder thought being a stunt-man and a military consultant for a clumsy movie star would be easy money, after all, there's only four days of shooting left on set. Instead, he is recruited by the C.I.A to spy on the movie set, as the movie is apparently funded by an ex-I.R.A terrorist, who wants to launder money through it. Bryce, the comedian who wants to turn action star, seems to idolize him and wants to learn as much as he can. The stunt coordinator obviously hates his guts, the female star wants to get in his pants, the director's niece keeps ending up in life-threatening situations, and the director herself, while stressed and bossy, looks rather amazing in a Wonder Woman outfit.

Jennifer Crusie is the author of several best-selling contemporary romance novels. Bob Mayer has written a number of action-adventure, and sci-fi novels under his own and various pen-names. The two met during a writers' conference and became friends. This is the first of their collaborative novels (they've written two more - Agnes and the Hitman and Wild Ride), and it is, very fittingly, a mix between action-adventure and romance. According to an interview with the authors, most of the book was written via e-mail, where Crusie wrote Lucy Armstrong's scenes, and Mayer wrote J.T. Wilder's, then they cleaned up the manuscript together. Crusie also imagined Lucy Lawless as a model for Lucy Armstrong (which I did not know when I read the book, but which fits wonderfully, especially with all the Wonder Woman comparisons), while Mayer saw Wilder pretty much like Kurt Russell from Soldier.

The book starts very abruptly, and I would possibly have liked to spend a bit more time getting to know J.T. I definitely would have liked to know what his actual name was. The book is a lot more action-packed than Crusie's contemporary romances, and this is not a problem. My niggles with the book is more with the lack of characterization with some of the characters, as mentioned, the hero himself is fairly loosely sketched out. The pair's second collaboration, Agnes and the Hitman was both funnier and more satisfying, so I will be giving Wild Ride a chance. No writer (and certainly no two writers) write perfect books every time.

Re-read: "Welcome to Temptation" by Jennifer Crusie

Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Re-read started: February 27th, 2010
Re-read finished: February 27th, 2010

Eagle-eyed readers may notice that I re-read this book all in one day. The first time I read it, on holiday in Russia this summer, it took me a whole two days, but then I was busy exploring St. Petersburg for the most part, and didn't have the luxury of doing hardly anything but reading for a whole day.

Sophie Dempsey comes from a long line of con-men and hustlers. Her father's one, her brother's one, her sister isn't exactly innocent. Yet Sophie just wants to stay out of trouble, and keep her family safe. She is perfectly content making wedding videos when her sister drags her to the little town of Temptation, Ohio to film an audition tape for her brother's faded movie starlet ex-girlfriend. They're only going to be in town for a week, making what Sophie thinks is a perfectly innocent little movie.

Phineas T. Tucker is the mayor of Temptation, like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him. He hates being mayor of the dusty little town, but has to live up to the family legacy. As if his life wasn't difficult enough being a single dad with a controlling mother, now he has to deal with a film crew coming to town, and the rumours that they are shooting a porn movie. Sparks fly the first time he and Sophie meet, and they just keep getting hotter each time they run into each other, and the more complicated things get.

Nothing much ever happens in Temptation, but soon Sophie and Phin have to deal with porn allegations, a murdered anchorman with at least a dozen people likely to have wanted to kill him, an unfortunately phallic water tower, various murder attempts, pool, softball, Dusty Springfield and very ugly wallpaper.

I love this book. I really do. It's funny, well plotted, and has an intensely likable cast of characters, including a delightful and not at all annoying little girl. It quotes The Princess Bride, which a sure-fire way to charm me. The romance is completely convincing, the various families portrayed are utterly believable and most important of all, the book delights me and makes me all fuzzy inside when I've finished reading it. A wonderful way to spend a day.