Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Lina, or Carolina, is the owner of Pani del Goddess, a Tulsa-based bakery. She’s quite an atypical heroine, in that she is older (y’all, she’s 43!) and she’s survived the end of a marriage that left her caught between a lack of confidence – her husband left her for a younger, more fertile woman – and a regrowth of her own capabilities. She’s the sole proprietor of a successful bakery using her grandmother’s Italian recipes, and is doing marvelously well until her accountant gives her horrid advice that leaves her deep in debt to the IRS. Facing a great blow to her ego and her bank account, she goes searching for food items to use in an expanded luncheon menu to try to earn back the money she needs and finds an old cookbook in a used book store: The Italian Goddess Cookbook.

Part recipe guide and part spellbook, the cookbook offers several options for Lina’s luncheon menu, and she decides to try out a recipe at home, since, as a proper Italian woman, she’s got plenty of the core ingredients in her home, including good wine. Gotta love a woman who keeps good wine in her home.

The recipe for Pizza Della Romana, or Pizza by the Meter (nice pun there that only becomes obvious in the following chapters) instructs her to light a candle, say some incantations and verses of gratitude to the Goddess Demeter, and leave an offering of dough sprinkled with wine, which Lina chooses to place outside at the base of a tree in her courtyard.

While she completes the recipe, she begins to feel prickles of sensation gathering around her, and as she places the dough at the base of the tree and makes her personal request of the Goddess as per the instructions, a unique flower blooms suddenly, releasing a beautiful aroma that Lina can’t help but sample. As she leans in for one last sniff, she suddenly finds herself sucked into the flower, and emerges in a completely different world, facing a woman on a throne, who tells her she is Demeter, and that Lina’s request is granted, if Lina will complete a task for Demeter in return.

Lina is stunned, and, much to my admiration, not at all cowed by the Goddess in front of her. She agrees to the request: she will inhabit the body of Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, and descend to the Underworld to lend the presence of a Goddess to Hades’ realm. In return, Persephone, Goddess of Spring, will inhabit her body, run the bakery and restore it to financial health, paying off her debt to the IRS in full and tripling profits in six months’ time.

So Lina descends to the Underworld, where she is greeted as Persephone and treated accordingly. Her presence causes a great deal of attention among the dead, who are more than eager to have a Goddess among them, paying attention to them, and listening to their needs. Then, Lina meets Hades, who is more than confused at the presence of the Goddess of Spring in his realm, and finds herself attracted to him – not at all part of the bargain of her visit to the Underworld.

Lina’s interaction with Hades makes up the most marvelous part of the book. Aside from PC Cast’s talent with description and her imaginative rendering of what the Realm of the Dead would look like, her creation of Lina as a mature heroine was a brilliant move. Lina is old enough to appreciate the young Goddess’s body she finds herself inhabiting, but also woman enough to have to talk herself out of feeling sorry for her aged self, and the body she will ultimately return to. She battles feelings of self-pity regarding body image several times, but rather than growing monotonous and eliciting a “Get OVER it already” response from yours truly, I found myself cheering Lina on, and thinking, “Well, now, that’s a clever way to talk yourself out of the my-butt-is-too-big doldrums.”

Further, Lina is also far from being a naïve woman who is clueless about men, and is able to see past Hades’ inexperience in talking to women, especially Goddesses, and view what must be beneath the surface of his often brusque and distant behavior. She looks at his creations in the Underworld and rightly realizes that a man without passion would never have been able to create such a place, or decorate it in such a thoughtful yet profoundly beautiful manner. Further, she is not at all repulsed by his connection to the dead, as most of the other immortals are, and she respects his attention to his duties as Lord of the Underworld.

And if I can remove my wrist from my forehead for a moment and recover from my maidenly swoon (snort!), let me just say, oh, my stars, that Hades. Tall, dark, handsome, enigmatic, dedicated, passionate, and convinced that he is flawed because he doesn’t view intimacy as a disposable item as the other immortals do. He isn’t interested in mere dalliances, because he has witnessed the bond between mated human souls, and covets that love and dedication for himself, even as he knows that no other immortal will likely fall in love, much less fall in love with him.

Ultimately, what makes this book so delicious for me is that everyone, even Persephone and Demeter, comes to appreciate the value of their own lives and the lives of others. Moreover, this is one of those stories based on a theme or myth that I’m already familiar with, and I began to dread how Cast would handle the ending of that myth, with Persephone spending six months in the Underworld, thus creating fall and winter as her mother, who is Goddess of Earth and Harvest, mourns her daughter and sends the earth into temporary death, and then returning to her mother’s side for six months of spring and summer. I, of course, should have trusted Cast that a happily ever after was easily wrought by twisting the meaning of the established myth into one that focuses more on the female powers of both Lina and Persephone. At no time does Lina fall back into a powerless state, which would be easy since she’s a mortal and she’s wandering around in a realm of Gods and Goddesses. She comes to realize her own power and talent, and appreciate the talent – and flaws – of the immortals around her.

The only caveat I have to this book, my copy of which bears a shocking complete lack of marked corners where I signal passages that were jarring or otherwise peculiar for use in my later reviews, was the curious use of product and concept placement. On one hand, the Batman movie franchise is well known enough that using it as a method of describing Hades as a dark, tortured hero is familiar and certainly appropriate. But when an author mentions specific actors – if you find that actor repulsive, does it ruin the book for you? In my personal case, no, but I have to wonder, for example, if I prefer Michael Keaton and you prefer Christian Bale, and the author prefers George Clooney, who you hate, can you enjoy the book without picturing Dr. Doug from ER? Personally, it’s no problem for me, but I am always curious about the decision to locate a book within reality, though when the book is a complete and total fantasy, grounding it with familiar names and concepts might be a calculated and wise decision on Cast’s part.

However, product placement: this is a pet peeve of mine. At one point Persephone mentions a very specific mid-range bottle of wine by vineyard and name, almost like an advertisement. In my experience, unless you’re referring to one of the few singularly great bottles of wine, a Chateau Petrus or Yquem, for example, which is like college tuition in a bottle, few people refer to mid-range wines by their names, unless they’re ordering from a menu. Plus, and this is certainly particular to me, Cast mentions a specific type of wine that has an absolutely annoying commercial that I hear ALL the time on the radio, so to read about it made me think of that irritating, self-congratulatory monologue about the benefits of this particular wine.

However, I will be frank: that is the only negative thing I have to say about this book. I loved Lina, I loved me some Hades, and I loved the subversion of an established male-centered myth into a happily ever after ending for two women, and the creation of a mortal woman who learns that even if she’s not immortal, she and all other women are certainly possessing of the powers of a Goddess. 

Manhunting: Crusie disses on this book pretty hardcore, but really, all the problems she listed? Did not notice them. Would not have CARED even if I had noticed them, because I love the story and the characters so much. First of all, Kate and Jake are adorable. What makes Kate especially adorable is that I fully expected her to be some sort of tiresome, superficial ice queen because Crusie totally sets it up that way then BLOWS UP THOSE EXPECTATIONS, the tricky, magnificent bitch. And Jake? I was SO TIRED of reading about alpha asshole cops and high-powered Type-A corporate raiders in contemporaries that Jake, who’s so relaxed and easygoing that his brother calls him a potted plant (which, if true, then he’s a really fucking SEXY potted plant, rrrowr) was a big breath of fresh air. Second of all, their courtship is hilarious. Third of all, the snobby twits Kate dates and what happens to them are worth the price of admission alone. And last but not at all the least, I like how Kate and Jake start out as friends before their attraction finally overwhelms them and they get down in the store-room in the back of a bar. Definitely an A. (p.s. I prefer the original ending, not the New, Improved Ending in the re-release.)

Getting Rid of Bradley: OK, a quick geek nitpick, and then I’m done: What in the fuck is the “second law of thermonuclear dynamics”? I mean, I have a passing familiarity with the second law of thermodynamics, though by no means am I familiar with with all the squirrelly math that goes into calculating entropy, but thermonuclear dynamics? What? WHAT? But! Love this book anyway. Not quite as much as I love Manhunting, but I love Zack, who is so friggin’ different from the average romance novel cop hero. I mean, he’s aggressive and hyperkinetic and all that, but he’s kinda goofy and funny and not at all an alpha asshole, and just such a GUY kind of guy. A somewhat twitchy guy, and the way they keep poking fun at how high-strung Zack is just cracks me up, like “Nerves? What nerves? Zack doesn’t have nerves, Zack IS a giant exposed nerve ending” (please keep in mind I’m paraphrasing wildly here, the actual quip is much funnier). And I love what a nice foil Lucy’s calmness is to his craziness. So yeah, I dig this book. A-

Sizzle: A wee novella, and it’s fun, though not exactly what you’d call substantial. I have little faith in the HEA given the communication problems the hero and heroine have, but it’s a really cute story, and the details of office life are actually convincing for once. (Besides kids and villains, many romances just can’t seem to portray office dynamics or real-life office jobs worth a shit.) B

Strange Bedpersons: Crusie provides a surprising amount of depth with this one. In some ways it’s a classic Odd Couple sort of a story: Tess is a bleeding-heart liberal crusader who doesn’t give a shit about what she wears and adores having sex in odd (and oftentimes public) places, while Nick is an image-conscious, square-jawed Republican yuppie who isn’t exactly thrilled about being caught bare-assed in a parking lot. Seeing the two of them change and compromise is a lot of fun, and Crusie really has a ball with the liberal-conservative dichotomy and all its stereotypes. And seriously: It has the funniest dropped-fork(s)-during-a-dinner scene EVER. Also contains one of the most heinous mis-statements about Moby Dick I have ever encountered, but it was fixed in the reprint. (Yes, it was one of the first things I checked when I bought it. Yes, I own all of Jennifer Crusie’s category romances in their original and reprint editions. Yes, I know I have a problem, but I wanted Crusie to have some of my money, see, since I had bought all these books used. Or that’s what I tell myself.) Anyway, A-

What The Lady Wants: A fun little caper/murder mytery. Cute animals. Adorably mussed hero who’s more than he seems. Heroine whose Life Is Changed. In short, a quintessential Crusie story. B+

Charlie All Night: Another book that really packs a surprising amount of depth in very few pages--the issue this time is marijuana legalization. But that’s just a teeny-tiny side-plot. Anyway, features yet another somewhat-sullen-yet-adorable Crusie heroine, and Charlie is another mussed-and-not-traditionally-handsome-but-still-hot hero. I especially enjoyed the details on running a radio show. I have no idea if they’re accurate, but it almost doesn’t matter if they aren’t because Crusie makes it feel real. A-

Anyone But You: Oh my God. What can I say about this book? The hero is a funny, cute, slacker ER doctor who’s younger than the heroine. There’s Forbidden Attraction (because they’re friends, see, and they value their friendship so much that they hold off on acting on it FOREVER, and… ooh, let’s just say this is one of my favorite plot devices, and few people do it quite as well as Crusie). The protagonists enjoy MST3K. The sassy, sharp, red-headed best friend actually IS sassy and sharp, not just a tarted-up bimbo with lame one-liners. And Fred. Part beagle, part basset hound, part manic depressive. The original title was The Importance of Owning Fred, and frankly, I wish they’d stuck with it. I love this book. Have I mentioned how much I love this book? I LOVE THIS BOOK. Love love love love and throw a buncha animated throbbing hearts on top of that love, whydoncha? No matter how shitty life is, this book makes me feel happier and more hopeful when I re-read it. A+
Addendum: I just remembered. This book was the very first romance novel I encountered in which the hero and heroine don’t want children. OH MY GOD. Quick, the smelling salts! Another reason why this book is an A+. You just don’t see too many of these critters in romance--or fiction in general. At least not ones who get HEAs.

The Cinderella Deal: Crusie mentioned how Strange Bedpersons was essentially a massive re-write of this book, and there’s definitely a passing resemblance: hippie-dippie heroine hooks up with Yuppie Scum hero, and both learn how to compromise when they fall in love. I like how Daisy swings too far one way, then swings too far to the other, then finds her middle path. It’s almost, like, Zen, man. *Beatnik finger-drums* B+

Trust Me On This: This is a sign I need to re-read the book, because I remember liking it quite a bit, but I remember shit-all about it. Seriously, all I can remember is that the heroine referenced Al Gore during some conversation. So based on the residual glow: B+

Tell Me Lies: Sarah has laid some major hateration on this book, but it’s the first Crusie I read, and I really liked it. I don’t normally like “woman faces crisis in mid-life and re-builds everything from scratch” stories, but I picked it up because of the incredible hype surrounding it, and wonder of wonders, for once my ass wasn’t burned. I really liked the hero and heroine, I really liked their story, I really liked the dog, and I really liked the kid. Now if only Crusie will work on more convincing villains… B+

Crazy For You: Read what Sarah said. (Even though she is SO WRONG about Tell Me Lies.) B+

Welcome to Temptation: Everyone loves this book. Me? I say, “Meh.” Not a BAD meh, mind you--but still. Meh. B-

Fast Women: Ooooh, much better. A murder mystery, two female friends who are fun to read about, cute but neurotic dog, patented dishevelled-but-hot Crusie hero. Ahhhh. A-

Faking It: What is with me and not lovin’ on the Dempsey books by Crusie? Again, I declare MEH. Which is too bad, because the premise of the story (two crooks, one significantly crookeder than the other, try to out-crook each other) sounded like so much fun. C

Bet Me: Big old SQUEEE OMG I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH from me, folks, which, as you may have gathered, isn’t exactly an uncommon occurence with me when it comes to Crusie. (But if you think I’m bad with Crusie, just wait till I finish my Laura Kinsale Lightning Reviews. Oh just you wait.) I love everything about the story: Min’s change from grumpy tight-ass to zaftig babe, Cal’s hotness, Elvis the cat, the two awesome best friends, the cute-but-not-nauseatingly-sweet kid, the descriptions of the fun, kicky shoes, the descriptions of the mouth-watering food, the way the Universe steps in and actively starts hurting Cal when he decides he can’t see Min any more. Sigh. A+

If You Dare features a non-cartoon cover, thankfully, and an art thief, Damien Black, who has just retired to Atlanta, where a scurrilous restaurateur has asked him to take on one more job. Not sure if he wants to trust the client, Damien visits the art museum where the heist is to take place, and meets the new director of the Atlanta Musuem, Angel Lafonte, who is smart, sophisticated, stunning, and the sister of Damien’s rather greasy, pushy potential client.

Angel is immediately knocked flat by Damien, and a puddle from a rainstorm, and he steals her cell phone and leaves her with his in order to ensure that he will see her again. Petty thievery and pickpocketing is a new technique in my experience of “ways the hero meets the heroine” plot devices, and instead of making Angel feel threatened and controlled, it causes her to up the stakes and steal something of his right back. A backbone she has, yes.

But only where the hero is concerned. Her sleazy brother has a tendency to treat her like an object – his object – and it’s more than creepy and gross. He has men following her, forcing her to dodge them in shopping malls, leaving her car at one entrance then hailing a cab from the other side of a crowded store. She tells him repeatedly to have his “goons” stop tailing her, but of course it continues.

He also has significant gambling debts, and has loan sharks after him, hence his pressuring Damien to take on one last job for him, a multi-million dollar heist from Angel’s art museum. Protecting his sister from himself is not something on darling brother’s mind, apparently, but woe be the man who gets near her while his goons are watching.

Meanwhile, a French cop, after Damien on the theory that he is le Phantome, a famous art thief who has eluded capture, has come to Atlanta, and begins following Damien wherever he can, tracking down his childhood friends and guardians, and generally shadowing Damien every step, regardless of what the Atlanta police think of his actions. Sadly, rental cars can’t keep up with Damien’s collection of sports cars, so Damien can lose him on the highway – so long as there’s no traffic.

Wait. I’ve been to Atlanta. How is this thief dude can zoom all over the city without getting stuck in traffic, while the minute I touch down I spend most of my time in Atlanta in bumper-to-bumper traffic jams? So not fair. I want an art thief chauffer in a Maserati, next time I’m in Atlanta.

The romance in this book is tricky, since the forces working against the couple consist of her brother, and their own unwillingness to be fully forthright with each other, leaving her brother ample room to sabotage their romance by revealing all the things Damien has been hiding from Angel, such as the true nature and origin of his evident fortune.

As an aside: is it not a fantasy complete when one reads a romance with a spectacularly wealthy hero or heroine? I dig contemporaries with seriously wealthy individuals; it’s one thing when the hero is a construction worker or a pharmaceutical salesman. It’s quite another when the hero is a master at his craft and is fabulously successful and well off for his efforts.

My problems with this book are simple: one, there are serious holes in the story, and by the time you realize how the entire puzzle fits together, which I can’t reveal without entire blowing the ending, you feel cheated of the experience of knowing what the technicalities of the art thievery entail. For example, in Mission:Impossible, did you care about the preparatory work, the assignment, or the romance, or did you care about the hero descending from a wire into a room to type on a computer suspended in midair, evading notice from the security system? Is it not much cooler to check out how Charlie’s Angels jump across security beams and trip alarm systems than it is to see them sprawled on Charlie’s couch? Anyone see the movie “Sneakers” with Robert Redford? There’s one scene where his team heats a room up to 98.7 degrees so he can walk very slowly across it, evading both the heat sensors and the motion detectors, to steal something. It’s the best scene, and the ingenuity of the heist is half the fun. So to have an art thief as the hero, and not pay any attention to describing the thiefing that goes on is disappointing, to say the least.

Further, Angel as a character is a bit of an enigma. First, she’s a strong woman who has earned a position as a director of an art museum. She’s knowledgeable about several types and eras of paintings and sculptures, and she’s attractive and savvy, able to go up against a charming, suave and attractive man who swipes her cell phone from her purse and match him charm for charm.

But then she allows her brother to push her into dangerous situations, and never ceases to give him more rope of forgiveness and excuse with which to hang himself. She’s a classic enabler, which makes sense in that he is her family and she feels she should stand by him, but by the time she has realized he has placed her in significant personal danger, she’s forced to rely on others to get her out. Her brother owes significant amounts of money to a uber-villain named Merrick, and Merrick demands Angel as repayment: the opportunity to sleep with her. And her brother doesn’t say no. He begs Angel to go out with him, even knowing that Merrick is dangerous, certainly homicidal, and not above raping her should she say no to giving him what he truly wants.

Even then, she refuses to give her brother the assing he truly deserves. If a sibling offered me up like that, I’d come seriously close to doing them lethal harm. Yet his actions have no satisfying consequences, and as a reader, seeing the villain figure be told his penalty is to have his sister cut him from her life, when she wasn’t all that pleased to have him there in the first place, is disappointing and irritating, especially when you want to root for such an otherwise brave and clever woman.

Dear Heroine:

Here are some things you should not do if you wish me to continue rooting for you:

1. Do not do something so unbearably stupid I grit my teeth, and moreover, don’t do it solely for the sake of pushing the story forward. Don’t find thousands of dollars in your safety deposit box, along with two passports for your husband and daughter, and then put it BACK. Take it OUT. Take it WITH YOU. Don’t find panties under your husband’s car seat and then THROW THEM AWAY. Put them in a bag and send them to your LAWYER.

2. Stop allowing life to happen to you and then complain when it does. If you want to take charge of your life, I understand. It’s a big step. But get off your ass and DO it already. The more you let larger and larger things happen to you, all the while complaining about them, without doing something for yourself in return, the more I want to stop rooting for you, and settle your problems by smacking you over the head repeatedly.

3. Stop making decisions that make no sense. Actually, for this one I blame the author. I don’t always get the authors who talk about their characters telling them what to do, but I do think that there comes a point in a written character’s story where you have to ask yourself, “What would this person do?” The more consistently you choose to have the character do something that makes no sense in light of the character herself, the more I get annoyed.

4. Do not repeatedly shove your head up your ass and then complain about the view and the smell.

Love,

Sarah

Seriously, y’all, I know I’m going to get a bundle of “Oh my GOSH I LOVED this book how could you be so HARSH” comments, but I did not like this book.

In fact, it rapidly reached the “flip through just to find out who did it and move on with your life” stage, which is about the next-to-worst stage you can get with me. The very worst is “toss the book across the room unfinished and forget about it as soon as possible.” That’s a rare stage with me.

Oddly enough, when I picked it back up to finish on the train on Monday, I did read through the ending without flipping through - only to find myself chastised by Crusie as every single one of the momentously stupid things the heroine did were rewarded by the bad guys getting caught, the mean people shutting up, and all because she was a Good and Honest Person.

The Good and Honest Person in question is Maggie Faraday, who just discovered her husband cheated on her, and then, one after another, has unbelievably weird things happen to her, like giant, rubber dominos falling in succession on her head to the point where you just want her to move out of the way. Her very best friend is surly and secretive (but of course she can’t call said best friend on her shit and say, ‘What is major malfunction?’) and her mother is gathering gossip about everyone else, while telling her to keep her own nose clean, and her entire life in the small town she lives in is based on her being a perfect angel person who never does anything wrong.

She was in turns boring and taunting me to hop into the story so I could beat her.

Her one-night-stand secret-hot-sex-fantasy man has come back to town, coincidentally (not) investigating her husband, who is indeed a philandering bastard buttsquatch. From the moment he shows up on her porch looking for Hubster, hilarity ensues.

Only, unlike many a Crusie I enjoyed thoroughly wherein hilarity ensued, I didn’t enjoy this one. It wasn’t just that the heroine did stupid things and made dumb decisions that left her vulnerable over and over, even as she told herself (and therefore the reader) that she was going to be strong and fight against the rumor-mongering fools in her town and do what she wanted from now on. It was the feeling that no one but NO ONE could truly and really be this so almighty clueless. I can’t even get into the specifics without spoiling the entire plot, as it is a convoluted thing I didn’t entirely capture. But damn. I didn’t cheer for her. I didn’t want her to win. I wanted her to get her poop in a group so I could read about a grown up instead of a plasticine doll in a romance novel.

The hero was even more of a vanilla character, if that’s possible. Aside from a device for sexual gratification, C.L. (and I am not even going to tell you what that stands for) is some kind of vigilante crossed with an accountant - he’s trying to figure out if Maddie’s husband was a shady businessman - which aside from making him a homosexual puppy beater, having him cheat little old ladies out of their money is a quick path to bastard status. C.L. was a nice enough guy, and I loved reading about his family, but did I get the sense that, were I Maddie, I’d swoon over him? Not at all.

The best friend was such a shitful friend, aside from instant babysitting and pushy attitude when needed, that I didn’t like her in the slightest, and kept wondering if her nasty secretiveness was a way for Crusie to point me in the direction of suspecting her of villainy. Then best friendy witch would do something honorable, like make sure Maddie and C.L. had time alone together, and I figured she couldn’t be all bad. But I still didn’t like her, and I didn’t root for her happily ever after, either. I wanted to smack her around for being such a grumpy witch.

This is probably one of the first times I’ve ever read a book where the heroine annoyed me so much I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit about her. I just didn’t. “I have to protect my daughter!” So you remove any evidence of your husband’s philandering that you might use to divorce his ass and acquire a settlement that would allow you to protect her. “I am not sure what is going on but something bad is happening and someone is after me!” So you hide a gun in the freezer after wiping it for prints, and then hide evidence from various people who might help you.

Shit on a shingle, Maddie, you stunk up the joint.  I think part of the problem is that I’m married to and friends with many attorneys, so to watch you do stupid things and leave yourself wide open - even though I know it’s going to work out in the end - was excruciating.

The only thing I couldn’t decide was whether this was my new all-time low book, or whether the crowne of crappe was still held by Honey Moon, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, which holds the distinction of being the first romance novel to ever make me nauseated. I think SEP still holds the Crappe Crowne, but this book was way down there, too, which makes it doubly disappointing. I hate it when authors I love write something I just can’t stand.

The challenge, I think, with a contemporary is that the author has to write a book set in a time that is close to, or related to, the reader’s reality. I’m supposed to believe, as the reader, that all this mess is happening right now. I’m not expecting the greatest history lesson ever told, and I’m not expecting to learn the inner workings of x-ray machines if the heroine is a medical technician, or the finer points of pool if the hero is a shark, but I do expect a reality I can believe in, even if the story takes place in a state or country I’ve never visited.

Crazy for You is the story of Quinn and Nick, residents of the small town of Tibbett, and long-time best friends. Right away, I’ll just tell you, I am a sucker for best-friends-who-fall-in-love books. Quinn is dating Bill, a tall blonde man who pretty much steers Quinn’s life for her, until Quinn adopts a little dog named Katie who inspires Quinn to stop letting life happen to her, and to start living her life deliberately and with a good deal of daring.

The idea of switching from the role of passive passenger to active driver in one’s life applies to just about every character in the novel, as Quinn’s decision to break up with her “beige boyfriend” and move out of their “beige apartment” first horrifies, then inspires everyone in her life, from her parents to her friends. Quinn lived a good portion of her life as “the good one,” “the fixer,” “the peacemaker,” “the quiet one,” “the dependable one,” existing in the shadow of her sister Zoe, a wild-at-heart adventuresome woman who has settled into wedded bliss after a short and disastrous marriage to Nick twenty years prior.

Nick harbors a secret, ardent desire for Quinn, but being her friend and her ex-brother-in-law is enough to cause him to keep his hands to himself, not to mention her relationships with good, stable Bill, the high school championship-winning coach.

Quinn’s breakup with Bill and decision to live boldly on her own cause shock waves of reaction in all directions, most notably that she becomes aware of Nick’s feelings for her, and watching her wear him down is the most electrically charged reading I’ve enjoyed in awhile.

Let me address the negative points of this book first, because the positives tip the scale towards a much more favorable rating, though the negatives do have to be addressed. First, and how to say this without giving away too much? The nature of Bill’s continued involvement was obvious to me from the very start, and perhaps that was intentional. Perhaps I was supposed to observe his behavior and treatment of Quinn and root for her to get away from him as soon as possible. But Crusie’s efforts in the vilification of Bill seemed to turn rapidly from the subtle to the glaringly, horribly obvious. I won’t give away too much, as I said, but I’ve complained about this before as a technique for evilization, and I will tell you, he ain’t gay.

Further, this is a thin book for a Crusie novel, and what’s missing is the development of the secondary characters to the point where you care about them. In Crazy for You, there was so little backstory and introduction of the secondary set of characters, particularly the women, that I had a really hard time keeping them all straight. I thought for half the book that one of them was the heroine’s second sister, and couldn’t figure out why Quinn never mentioned her when she spoke on the phone to Zoe. One of the valuable and enjoyable aspects of a good Crusie story is that the secondary characters, and the parallel love story that compliments that of the hero and heroine, are clever, interesting people that you care about. You like the hero and heroine better because you like their friends. In this novel, the interaction between Quinn and her friends seemed to assume that I knew them already, when really, I didn’t.

For example, the secondary romance between Nick’s brother Max and his wife was fraught with big misunderstandings and a lot of drastic hair cuts and slammed bedroom doors. It was meant to compliment Quinn’s transformation from passive to active participant in her life, and in some respects watching an existing marriage re-energize itself, though sometimes through some hurtful and passive-aggressive measures, applied the idea of taking charge of one’s life to more than just the young, single heroine types. But after awhile, the slamming of doors and the “you’re not getting any and I’m not telling you why,” got real old.

The final element that really pissed my switch off is a spoiler so you know what to do. I’ll come right out and say it here, Bill turns into a stalker. First he refuses to accept that Quinn has moved out, and continues to try to bulldoze her back into his life and into “their apartment.” Then his behavior grows rapidly bizarre. He breaks shutters on her new house so he can watch her, he abuses her dog because she growls at him when he breaks into her home, he copies a spare key he finds in the house and lets himself in to lie in her bed and steal her clothes, he sabotages her house to the point of causing serious and potentially lethal damage, and in the climax of his bizarreness, he breaks into her house again to move in with her uninvited.

By far my biggest problem: a shady reference to Bill going to jail for “years and years.” Horse. Fucking. Pucky. Stalkers to not go to jail for years and years. Celebrities with documented cases of weird people trying to break in to marry them in the middle of the night can’t prosecute their stalkers successfully, so why would a small town coach be convicted and sent to jail for years and years? Stalking is not punished to nearly the degree that it should be, and to make an exception for a happily ever after yanked me right out of the fantasy and pissed me off.

But now, the good parts, and oh, were there good parts. Candy challenged me to explain why I love a hero that resists, a big lug of a man who tries desperately to fight how he feels for the heroine, trying to convince himself that he’s happier without her, that getting involved will just break his little world in to messy, hard-to-clean pieces. The reason I love this particular type of romance is simple: I met my husband in high school, and for over two years we were great friends while he fought how he felt for me, until he gave up and we became a couple.

He told me later that he knew when we met senior year of high school that I’d “make a lousy girlfriend” but I’d “be a great wife.” This is from a 17-year-old - but you understand that it pissed me off until he explained: if he got involved with me, it would be permanent, and serious, and at 17 he didn’t want that. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted that serious a relationship. But after years of being friends and years of fighting how he felt, he gave in and now he enjoys our romance as hard as he fought it originally. We’ll be married five years in May.

Reading about heroes that are friends with the heroine, while trying desperately to avoid and deny their growing feelings for her, is the best kind of romance for me. Crusie’s development of Nick and Quinn’s romance, well, to quote Candy, when Crusie does it well, I feel it all the way to my tippy toes, and gosh I was blushing on the train I was so happy to watch these two come together. He fought and rationalized and tried to talk himself away from her, and then he made a move on her, she realized how he felt, noticed him in a whole new light, and slowly wore him down until he…well, I can’t spoil that part for you, now can I?

The villain might have been clumsily done at times, but the pure passion and tingly wonderfulness that was Nick and Quinn’s romance made this book a serious treat for me, and I had to stop myself from finishing the book too fast.

As I mentioned when I started, my expectations of a contemporary, particularly a Crusie, are pretty high, and I tolerate a lot less mishigas with the plot and the characters when the novel takes place close to the present time. While the antagonist and the resolution of the elements working against the couple weren’t ideal, the romance more than made up for it.

I just read back over this review and realize I spent more time writing about what the problems were than about what Crusie does right. “The romance is great, trust me” doesn’t seem like enough of a recommendation, but please, do trust me. The emotional depths and internal wrangling from the hero, the heroine’s slow realization that her friend is more to her than she thought – oh, it is just breathtaking, and there’s no one quote that can illustrate it. Small moments and passing thoughts on both sides add up to a marvelous emotional climax as well as a sexual one.

I’ve had to change my rubric: If I’m sorry that I have to send it back because I won’t be able to reread and visit with the characters again, it’s damn good.