The main problem with Jennifer Crusie books is that I have a hard time putting them down.<\/p>\n
Bet Me<\/cite> isn't my favorite of hers, but it was still engaging enough that I read it in something like a week, mostly just before going to sleep and just after waking up. I marked about three dozen lines with book darts—mostly funny, but sometimes charming or even wise.<\/p>\n The plot is one of those plots they tell writers never to write, where everything is based on a misunderstanding that one honest conversation—in fact, one sentence—would resolve. I found that a little frustrating, especially 400 pages of it, but mostly the book was charming enough that I didn't mind. (And to some extent, the difficulty of having such conversations is part of what the book is about.) I liked the protagonist being overweight—Mary Anne noted<\/a> that you don't see that so often in romance novels—and I liked the protagonists' friends, and I was delighted to see a lesbian as a prominent minor character, something else I gather you don't see so often in romance novels. A nice mirror-image of the usual modern romantic-comedy thing where the female lead has a fabulous gay male best friend.<\/p>\n Oh, and I adore the ending of this book.<\/p>\n