Perfect escapist fare: Who knew Ohio could be so much fun?
A raunchy, romantic comedy about art forgery, thievery, and all manner of con-artistry that’s as hard to resist as one of Davy Dempsey’s cons.
Davy, whose older sister Sophie starred in Crusie’s last outing (Welcome to Temptation, 2000), comes from a long line of scam artists. He arrives in Columbus, Ohio, to steal back his own money from ex-girl friend Clea, a charmer whose wealthy husbands tend to die under suspicious circumstances. Davy’s plan is to go straight once he has the money, but old habits die hard. Born into a family of art swindlers, Tilda Goodnight is now a respectable painter of residential masterpiece murals (Botticelli in the bathroom). She’s desperate to “retrieve” a painting her niece has mistakenly sold to Clea that could expose Tilda’s larcenous teenage career, when she painted under the name Scarlet Hodge, the imaginary daughter of the respected primitive Homer Hodge. Davy and Tilda meet in Clea’s closet while attempting their separate burglaries. Soon Davy has rented a room at the Goodnight Gallery and met Tilda’s lovely, unhappy mother Gwen, her angelic sister Eve, Eve’s gay ex-husband and troubled adolescent daughter, not to mention Eve’s lascivious alter ego Louise. The Goodnights are a family of eccentric delights, and Crusie avoids the pitfall of portraying them as too impossibly cute or sweet: the sense of real human frailty in all her characters makes even the villains oddly endearing. As Davy helps Tilda retrieve the rest of the Scarlets, the two play a game of sexual cat and mouse that culminates in some very hot sex. Meanwhile, Gwen, who has a secret of her own, is courted both by the art patron Clea has marked as her next fiancé and by the Goodnights’ mysterious new Gallery boarder, whom they suspect Clea has hired as a hit man to kill Davy in this roller-coaster ride of double identities, scams, and misinformation, none meant to be taken too seriously.
Perfect escapist fare: Who knew Ohio could be so much fun?Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-28468-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
Empty calories, presented cutely enough.
A family wedding forces a runaway fiancée to stick her toe back in the dating pool.
In this weightless debut, Emmy Everett emerges from seclusion—three years in Rhode Island working in a tackle shop—to return to Scarsdale for older brother Josh’s wedding to graceful Meryl. But Josh isn’t sure he wants to get married this weekend: He might be in love with Elizabeth, a holistic veterinarian with whom he has a connection (it was “like they were hearing the same song”). Urged on all sides to be supportive of her sibling during his crisis of indecision, Emmy can’t avoid contemplating the vacuum in her own love life. Mind you, that could easily be remedied, since suitors dog her every step. There’s Josh’s best friend, sexy chef Jaime; old local boyfriend Justin, although he now reveals himself to be gay; and above all ex-fiancé Matt, last seen sleeping in a motel room next to the abandoned engagement ring as Emmy slipped out the door with the knowledge that “she was losing him slowly anyway.” Dave milks the reliable wedding scenario set pieces, supplementing them with various comic characters, including Meryl’s birth parents, a pair of sociology professors never previously seen outside the Ozarks, and Emmy’s Jewish mother (“Eat just a little”). The book offers a kind of innocent yet worldly-wise charm via Emmy’s perky running commentary, but for every burst of invention, like the power outage that throws the doomed wedding off course, there’s a heaping portion of familiarity, especially in Matt’s prostration before Emmy (“I still have the engagement ring”) and her inevitable conjoining with an even more over-romanticized prospect.
Empty calories, presented cutely enough.Pub Date: May 22, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03756-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
Well-written women’s weepie from the author of many, now with her first hardcover.
Blindness, babies, bathos.
When photojournalist Jessie Ryder finds that she’s losing her sight to a rare retinal disease, it’s time to take stock—and, at last, meet the child she gave away years before. She rails against her cruel fate as she leaves New Zealand for the Texas town where she grew up. After all, she’d stayed away, kept her distance—and kept her side of the bargain she made with God. She’d provided the best possible home for her newborn by handing her over to her sister Luz and her husband Ian. Even now that she’s a teenager, Lila has no idea that she was adopted (and there’s another thing even Luz doesn’t know). Lila escapes serious injury during a joyriding car accident that shakes the family out of its complacency and forces them to grapple with the Big Questions. Why does Ian, a Death Row lawyer, always have time for his clients but not for his family? Must Luz always shoulder most of the burden of raising the kids and running the house? Luz pines for what she perceives as her sister’s freedom, but Jessie, of course, isn’t really free. She’s always been haunted by what she never told Luz: Lila is the product of a long-ago, whirlwind affair with Ian. Her vision dimming day by day, Jessie wonders whether she’ll ever find happiness. There’s hunky rancher Dusty Matlock, father of an adorable toddler, still fending off media attention ever since his pregnant wife, comatose after a stroke, gave birth by Cesarean and expired a couple of years ago. Should Jessie give in to Blair LaBorde, tabloid reporter, and photograph Dusty? Perhaps. But will Jessie even admit that she’s losing her sight? Yes, once she shares her story yet again at the world-famous center for the blind not far away.
Well-written women’s weepie from the author of many, now with her first hardcover.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-55166-673-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
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