Grade: B

First thing’s first, I love the cover. The shoes are adorable, but I would never wear them because I can’t walk in anything with heels. I’m a klutz, so I would just end up breaking my ankle or worse, so no thanks. Secondly, Crusie is hilarious. I swear, no one can write dialogue like this woman. There’s zingers and one-liners all over the place and it’s just really fun to watch. However, I hope it never becomes a movie because I just know that Hollywood will cast a bunch of talentless assholes whom I will hate, and I’ll just be bitter and weird about it, and honestly, I have enough things to be weird and bitter about. Last but not the least, I love the sidekicks. Usually, I’m the first person to complain when the story is cluttered with other people I couldn’t give two shits about, dispensing Mary Sue advices to the protagonists, playing matchmakers, and various other bullshittery, but not this time. I actually liked these other people. They’re hilarious, a lot of fun, and I’m a little envious that Min and Cal could have such great friends. The parents are assholes, though. Anyway, I had a lot of fun reading this book, but a lot of stuff annoyed me, too, so I couldn’t give it an A. I really, really wanted to, but—okay, you’ll see.

Minerva Dobbs is a thirty-something zaftig lady (whoo-hoo!) who has just been recently dumped by this guy she’s been dating for three months because she wouldn’t sleep with him. This means she wouldn’t have a date for her baby sister’s wedding for which she is the maid of honor, so she’s pretty pissed about that. That same night, while she and her girlfriends are hanging out at a bar, her friend Liza spots a hot guy across the room talking to her sleazy ex boyfriend. Liza dares Min to go up to the hot guy and chat him up, but on her way there, Min overhears her ex boyfriend David betting the hot guy that he wouldn’t be able to get Min to have sex with him and he has a month to do it. Min is pretty sure that she heard the hot guy say “Piece of cake” in reply, so she storms back to her friends, bitches about him, but in the back of her head, she starts thinking that maybe she could pay back the hot guy and David somehow by leading the hot guy on for three weeks, making him think he would get some, then telling him to fuck off. She starts thinking that maybe she could even get him to be her date to her sister’s wedding, but before she can seriously formulate a solid plan, she discards the idea as stupid. When the hot guy crosses the room and asks her if he could take her to dinner that night, Min agrees merely to get back at David, and leaves with him. The hot guy tries to charm her immediately, throwing her bullshit lines, until she tells him to cut it out because she’s not falling for it.

Our hero, Calvin Morrissey, just recently dumped his psychologist girlfriend when she started dropping hints about wanting to become the future Mrs. Morrissey. Over the years, Cal has developed a reputation around town for a love-em-and-leave-em kind of guy and while he doesn’t like the image, he can’t dispute it, either. His ex girlfriend Cynthie thinks it’s because his mother never loved him nor showed him true affection, so that is why he goes around courting women, trying to get them to love him, only to leave them once they start showing their feelings for him, because he is subconsciously trying to punish his mother. Or something. I don’t usually pay attention to psycho babble. Anyway, he’s hanging out with his two best friends at a bar one night when the three of them spot three women across the bar: a red head, a petite blond, and a voluptuous blond who immediately rubs him the wrong way mostly because she’s wearing an ugly suit and a bitch face. His two best friends claim the first two, but a colleague bets him ten bucks that he wouldn’t be able to get the buxom blond to leave with him and his two best friends, Roger and Tony scoff at the bet because they think it’s a piece of cake for Cal, so the man bets Cal ten thousand dollars that he wouldn’t be able to get the woman to sleep with him and he’d give him a month to do it. Cal thinks the second bet is sleazy and turns it down, but takes the first bet and turns on all his charm to get the zaftig blond to leave with him. After pretty much tearing him a new asshole because she thinks he’s just a sleazebag player, she leaves with him, anyway, and Cal takes her to his favorite restaurant, and she tells him to drop the charming act because she thinks it’s bullshit. They talk, they argue, they begin to like each other, but since they are both suspicious of each other, they agree to never see each other again Hah! That never works! Anyway, because this is a romance novel, they bump into each other again and again and again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

What I really liked about this particular story is the friendship that develops between Min and Cal. They banter, they argue, and each scene that they share together just sizzles. These two have genuine chemistry and you could really see it when they begin to respect each other as equals and friends. Min knows about the bet from the first chapter, so there isn’t a big misunderstanding later on (well, there is, but over something else) like the one in She’s All That where Rachael Leigh Cook says to Freddie Prinze Jr: “Am I a bet? Am I a stupid bet?” and she goes all crazy and with her telekinetic powers, kills everyone in the party and skewers Freddie with a flagpole and—oh, wrong movie. But because Min knows about the bet and refuses to just confront Cal about it, it stands between them like this big pink elephant in a tutu, and for about 80% of the book, she bitches about nothing but the stupid bet (20% is about her weight) and how Cal can’t possibly find her attractive because she’s fat and ugly and she whines and whines and I don’t know how her friends could have restrained themselves from bashing her head in with a shovel just to get her to stop whining. I couldn’t see why she just couldn’t go up to Cal, tell him that she had known about the bet from the very beginning, yelled at him about it, slapped him upside the head a couple of times, had a good laugh about it afterwards, then screwed like minks for like… a week. While reading this book, I actually had to put it down a couple of times and take deep breaths so I could keep myself from slamming my head against a wall.

As for Cal, yes, he’s too good to be true, but who can resist a man who offers you good sex and Krispy Kreme donuts? There’s a scene where Min takes him to dinner with her parents and her mom starts tearing into her about her diet and how fat she is and Cal pretty much tells her parents to fuck off, then orders Min to eat a dinner roll. With butter. Mmm… my kind of man. Oh and that scene in the park where he feed her pieces of chocolate glazed Krispy Kremes in between kisses? Oh, I died! And what about that scene when Min’s über-bitchy, but super-fun friend Liza dares Cal to serenade Min in the restaurant where they’re all having dinner and he sings “Love Me Tender” to her because she loves Elvis Presley. SO FUCKING ROMANTIC, man! But this isn’t a one-sided courtship. Min kicks ass in this department, too. I particularly liked the scene where Cal takes Min to meet his parents and at the dinner table, Cal’s parents start going off on how Cal is abnormal because he’s dyslexic (which, by the way, only seems to show up when it’s convenient to the plot… hmm) and how stupid he is for not joining the family business and they’re pretty much just assholes, but Min stands up for Cal and begins telling his parents how brilliant and smart he is, then afterwards, leaves the dinner table to have ice cream in the kitchen with Cal’s nephew. Man, I really enjoyed these two together, but I could have done without the bullshit “He can’t love me, I’m fat and ugly, so we’ll just be friends because I’m fat and ugly and not allowed to be happy” bullshit from Min. Hey, fat chicks need love, too, and why shouldn’t they get it from hot guys who don’t care what they look like and enjoy making out with them while eating Krispy Kremes? That shit is heaven, man!

I also mentioned in the beginning how much I really enjoyed the side characters of this story. On Min’s side, there’s Liza, the stereotypical ball-buster best friend, and Bonnie, the fairy tale-believing, optimistic best friend. On Cal’s side, there’s Tony, a love-em-leave-em type like Cal who believes in the “chaos theory” and then there’s Roger, who is one of the last true romantics and just want to find his one true love to marry and have babies with. I don’t think the book would have been the same without these guys. I even enjoyed the crazy Boris-and-Natasha antics of Cynthie and David, who only wanted to break up Cal and Min because Cynthie believes that Cal is really in love with her and David thinks Min should be with him (besides, he would hate more than anything to lose to Cal). These two are certifiably fucking insane and kind of cartoony, but it was a laugh reading about them.

Anyway, I REALLY enjoyed the first half of this book, coasted through the middle, but near the end, I began to get bored because the story kind of devolved into this weird countdown until the moment that Cal and Min would have sex. Around this time, I was also getting tired of Min’s whining and wished that she and Cal would just fuck like minks already. Also, there’s this scene at the end where Cal and Min have this big misunderstanding that didn’t make sense to me merely because the cause of it was David, Min’s sleazy ex, telling Cal that Min has just been playing him for a fool all along, and Cal believes him. WHY THE HELL WOULD HE BELIEVE MIN’S EX WHEN HE IS SO OBVIOUSLY JUST TRYING TO BREAK THEM UP? Moron. Other than that, this book is a fun way to spend a couple of hours and you can always depend on Crusie to bring on the sizzling dialogue and crazy, but hilarious antics. I laughed my ass off at all of them. Man, the woman knows humor. But fuck, now I want Krispy Kremes and Chicken Marsala. Is there a twenty-four hour Krispy Kreme store around? Damn you, Crusie!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2005 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Contempo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.