This is just a quickie because I read in bed until ten (oh, the luxury!!), and have been online for almost three hours since then (with interruptions for doing laundry, emptying the dishwasher, and making breakfast for my son), so I really shouldn't even be sitting here. BUT, I'll just knock this out quickly.
We went out to the lake for a couple of nights this week and I wanted something romance-ish to read but I didn't want to take a new one on the chance that I'd grab a bad one. So I fell back on Crusie (always an excellent fall back position) and grabbed Faking It. For some reason, I didn't really like this one back when I originally read it a couple of years ago. I had just discovered Crusie, and I think I read four or five in a row, and this was the last of them. It was OK, but I think maybe I had just had too much Crusie. So I thought I'd give it another shot.
It is really good. It follows some of the same themes as Welcome to Temptation (as well as sharing one of the main characters): you have to accept and even relish your partner's eccentricities, the weirdnesses that make them who they are. The hero, Davy Dempsey, is a former sort-of con artist, who justified his cons in the past because he never took money from anyone who didn't deserve to have it taken-- he specialized in conning con artists, often returning money to the victims. Tilda Goodnight is an artist whose weirdly beautiful art has been buried over the years in service to her boring career as a copycat mural artist which supports her goofy, lovable family-- all of whom live in apartments above the art gallery started by Tilda's parents.
The bad "guy," to the extent that Faking It has a bad guy, is Clea Lewis, a gorgeous, aging gold-digger who made off with all of Davy's money (long story). Usually I skim over the "bad guy" parts, because they don't interest me and they are rarely necessary to understanding the plot (Crazy for You, case in point, even though I love that novel), but Clea is so hilariously self-obsessed that her bits are priceless.
So, it's excellent. I'm revising my Crusie list. I've decided to start doing stars instead of grades, and this one gets four and a half stars out of five.
2 comments:
This one has long been a favorite of mine. I love the 5 step system Crusie outlines for pulling a con and how they show up periodically throughout the book.
I also love exactly what you have pointed out . . . that the character traits that make the hero and heroine a little dicey in terms of relationship potential are also the strengths that make them attractive as partners.
I'm adding as a postscript, though, that Faking it and Welcome to Temptation have two of the lamest proposals ever: "Marry me and make me the most confused man on earth" ??? and "Marry me and ruin the rest of my life" ??? who the hell would say yes to either one of those? lol
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