Strange Bedpersons

I'm starting to think there's something seriously wrong with me - I don't "love" Jennifer Crusie's writing. Given my love for humorous romances and her reputation for writing some of the funniest, sexiest romances ever, shouldn't I love all of her books? Well, I've liked a couple, found a couple of others "okay," but never really got on the Crusie bandwagon. Frankly, I thought I'd stop trying after failing to get into Welcome to Temptation, but when Strange Bedpersons was reissued last month, I thought I'd give it a try.

I just finished the book, which received DIK status at AAR by a reviewer whose taste is often in sync with my own. When I got stuck on page 50 and could not move forward, I resorted to a technique I sometimes am forced to use - reading from the back in hopes of finding something that will induce me to finish a book "correctly." That something never came.

In Strange Bedpersons, Tess Newhart is convinced by her old boyfriend, Nick Jamieson, to pretend to be his fiancée for the weekend; his boss won't make him partner in the lawfirm unless he's "settled down." The partnership also depends upon signing a major author as a client. Tess is a liberal, commune-raised do-gooder and Nick is a conservative yuppie lawyer. While Tess would love to turn Nick down, she's got a soft spot for him, and it doesn't hurt that the author sits on the board of a school where Tess hopes to teach. Oh yeah, Tess just lost her job.

My problems started almost immediately; the whole "settled down" thing seems outdated for a 1994 release, let alone a 2004 reissue. It's hard to say why this romance novel premise failed for me in this book when another romance novel premise, the modern-day marriage of convenience, worked for me in a different Crusie release - The Cinderella Deal. Perhaps it was that The Cinderella Deal wasn't written as a laugh-a-minute book while Strange Bedpersons was, but for some reason what Crusie was selling I simply wasn't buying this time. Even though little of the book actually focused on the fake fiancée aspect, it left a sour taste in my mouth that never went away.

I also didn't much like Tess; she was simply so over-the-top in her world view and too angry, far too angry, it seems to me, to be an effective teacher for children. She's such a caricature that, given Crusie's liberal leanings on top of my own, I wouldn't have guessed she'd have been so difficult for me to like. She surely gets in her shots at conservatives, though. Mr. Patterson, father to Nick's best friend Park, and boss to both at the lawfirm, is presented as both unscrupulous and not very legally sharp; Mrs. Patterson is every stereotype of the "ladies who lunch" set; and the author at the center of everything sounds like every right-wing radio host on the air these days.

I liked Nick far more than Tess (he's written very well as a "guy"), and enjoyed the secondary romance between Park and Tess' best friend Gina, but only at the end of the book when Park finally develops a spine. Probably my favorite character in the story, though, was Christine, Nick's secretary, who plays the smallest role of anyone. Reading her romance is something I'd like to do, but since Crusie's long since moved on, that's unlikely ever to occur.

I sensed that I'd never adore Crusie like most everyone I know after I read Anyone But You. Widely considered the funniest romance of 1996, it did earn a B+ from me, but in no way was the DIK it was for others. Charlie All Night, btw, earned a C+ from me. My final grade for Strange Bedpersons? A C-.  While I did enjoy some of it, what I didn't like I really didn't like.

Oh, one last thing. I wouldn't have even attempted to finish this book but didn't know how much of it I'd have to read before I could mark it "read" and thereby count it as a book read for 2004. I know that sounds weird, but I'm very interested in discovering what others do, and if perhaps I should add a "tried to read" count. Let me know what you think, and what you do. I'm determined to reach my goal of reading 100 books this year, but if reading backwards with books that don't work well for me is how I must proceed, I'm not looking forward to it.

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books

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