Anyone But You

I requested this book from a bookswap purely on the basis of The Popcorn Dialogues. I know Jennifer Crusie as one half of Jenny Crusie and Lucy March (aka Lani Diane Rich), and I've enjoyed their occasionally wine-glazed podcasts on what makes movies good or bad ("Lord, it wasn't good" – I am required by natural law to admire and applaud anyone who quotes Bloom County). They are both sharp, smart, very funny ladies (who know and love Bloom County), and there is always the hope that personality really will come out in a person's writing.

And, you know, it does here. I'm not at all sorry I asked for this book, nor that I read it. I don't mean that as damning with faint praise – really, I opened the book-shaped package with the show more Goodreads bookswap label and questioned my judgment for a minute. With a thousand books out there I know I want, I chose a possibly stupid romance novel? But: PopD. Then a GR friend recommended Jennifer Crusie in an unrelated conversation, and I picked up poor maligned Anyone But You.

Jenny's personality holds true from the podcasts to the novel, and it's just plain fun. This is chick lit in its purest form, very nicely written, funny – wry, even – with an older heroine (older than the usual 20-year-old, I mean) who is not a size two, a hero who is not perfect but also not Tragically Flawed, and just a …well, a fun story with a touch of fairy tale about it. It's sweet – a quick candy read, and one of the better brands of candy at that. Four stars out of sheer sentimental gooeyness. show less

Gosh. I was very much with this book (despite some gender-y assumptions that bugged me, it's light and very funny and the dog Fred is amazing and I find the female lead's experience of post-marriage life believable and sympathetic). But then the last 30 pages, the MORE PROBLEMS bit before the HEA, left me so disgusted with the previously-lovely male lead--who for no apparent reason decides his new parter wants a whole life she's emphatically rejected and just does not act like she's a full human being at all--and sort of no longer behind the relationship and icked out by the book in general that I can't really recommend it. I'm ... left quite unsure why that happened, and bummed, as there are really charming bits here.

I love Jennifer Crusie's romance novels, and I've only read two of them. As a closer to 40-than-30-year-old mother of two, I appreciate a romance novel (or any work of fiction geared towards adults) with a female protagonist I can truly relate to. In Bet Me and Anyone But You, the leading ladies work wonderfully unglamorous jobs, have body/weight issues and have an unabashed powerful sex drive. Unlike their chick-lit counterparts, Jennifer Crusie's heroines are emotionally generous, educated, beautiful in their ordinary looks, don't obsess about the latest fashion trends, or are socially awkward neurotics.

They are normal women with normal quirks, and you can understand why the hunk du jour in Bet Me and Anyone But You fall for them and show more want them more than just for their looks. The ladies are witty, relevant, strong-willed without being the stereotypical bitch. The male characters are not as well drawn out as the women, but are presented as more than just two-dimensional and all-understanding eye candy that is featured in today’s more contemporary female-geared fiction. show less

A quick, cute read, though this is definitely an early Crusie: there isn't a plot so much as a series of convenient and rather repetitive excuses to draw the book out to its required length. I'm also beginning to wonder why it is that Crusie is so insistent that none of her heroines have or want children: trying to buck genre constraints, or something else? Still, this was very funny, Fred the depressive beagle was adorable, and it's got an older woman/younger man romance—definitely worth the couple of hours it takes to read.

One of the many things I love about Crusie is her ability to write non-traditional romances. While the majority of romances I've read revolve around female characters who are young, slim (yet curvy, the lucky gals), and generally naive, Crusie writes instead about women outside this stereotypical mold. In truth, she writes about real women. In this particular novel her main female character is recently divorced and has just turned 40 and the only things preventing her relationship with the male lead are their age difference (he's 30) and her worries about her body and the effects of aging like a normal person. While "Bet Me" remains my fave Crusie, this book is another example of her humour and ability to make romances between real (or show more at least non-stereotypical) people believable. show less

I love Jennifer Crusie; she writes two of my favorite books: Fast Women and Agnes and the Hitman and I thought I had just about all her books, but I found this one at the bottom of a box at the FOTL sale Saturday.

For Nina Askew, turing forty means freedom—from the ex-husband whose career always came first, from their stuffy suburban home. Freedom to have her own apartment in the city, freedom to focus on what she wants for a change. And what she wants is something her ex always vetoed—a puppy. A bouncy puppy to cheer her up. Instead she gets…Fred.
Overweight, smelly and obviously suffering from some kind of doggy depression, Fred is light years from perky. But for all his faults, he does manage to put Nina face-to-face with Alex show more Moore, her gorgeous, younger downstairs neighbor.

Alex looks great on paper—a sexy, seemingly sane, surprisingly single E.R. doctor who shares Fred’s abiding love for Oreos—but a ten-year difference in age, despite his devastating smile, is too wide a gap for Nina to handle. But with every silver-haired stiff she dates, the more she suspects it’s the young dog-loving doctor she wants!

It's a quick read and not her best work, but it's still a lot of fun. The show-stealer in this one is, hands-down, Fred the dog. I also really liked the way the romance centered around the older-woman/younger-man dynamic. This was the perfect read for a sunny, lazy afternoon. show less

I just read my first Crusie this month, and I think I'm hooked. This is my second. I picked it largely because 1) it was on Scribd and 2) I'm a 40-something single woman and this storyline was like catnip.

Nina is newly divorced and 40-something, content to have a solitary life now. Alex is a newly 30 single ER doctor who is tired of dating women whose goal in life is to be a dr's wife. He's tired of his overachieving family holding it against him that he's an ER dr and not some specialized "ologist". He wants sex and companionship without signing up for the life long commitment. They meet via Nina's ridiculous dog and hang out. I question whether he's able to keep such solid abs after all of the oreos he eats. And whether a man who show more loves classic films the way he does could really exist. And I hate Nina to death for worrying so damned much about the southern migration of all of her fleshy bits. She's super self conscious about her age dealing with Alex. And that does get a little old in the book. Maybe because I don't give a shit about that myself.

Apart from that though--this is a lovely, take-your-time to fall in like, in lust, in love story with a HEA. And it's pretty damned solid all the way through. Give it a read, especially if you're single, divorced and 40-something. show less