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.
More on my blog.
It was a weirdly messy book, but still engrossing.
Bet Me wasn’t my cup of tea but your rave review of Welcome to Temptation has prompted me to give Cruise another go!
I really hope you like it now. My friend Lydia, who also wasn’t all that impressed with Bet Me also really loves it. It’s very silly (it gets downright farcical at times), but I find I love the characters so much I willingly suspend my disbelief. I can totally understand why Crusie’s books aren’t for everyone.
I suspect a lot of the 90s and early 2000s contemporary romances are better if you first read them during the time they came out. It’s frankly the only explanation I have for why some of Susan E. Phillips’ Chicago Stars books are still so well loved. There are absolutely things in them that I object to, and I am glad that contemporaries (like historicals) have developed further.
One if the first things Crusie published was a novelette called. Manhunting. It was published by Harlequin. If you can find it, it’s really worth reading. All of the banter, none of the mommy issues.
Having looked through my records (and Goodreads), I find that I have actually read Manhunting way back when I first discovered Crusie, and tried to read as much of her stuff as possible. I seem to recall there was something involving a golf course? Should probably take time to re-read it.
The golf corse heart attack was pretty funny.