Bet Me

Honestly, I found this book to be quite enjoyable. Again, my initial complaint wasn't with Crusie's writing style or her voice, but with plot development (or the lack there of). In Bet Me, she has, oh almost 200 more pages to work with, so needless to say the plot and love story are much more well-developed.

Our heroine is 33-year-old Minerva Dobbs--aka Min--a chubby, sweet, intelligent actuary who dresses a little dowdy but who has interesting taste in shoes. The hero? Tall, dark and handsome Calvin Morrisey who has a habit of making women love him--and then leaving them.

When Min's boyfriend breaks up with her three weeks before her sister's wedding, she's understandably a little ticked off. Okay, she's more than just a little ticked show more off, considering the main reason he broke up with her was because she wouldn't put out. The icing on the cake, however, is an overheard wager between her ex (David) and the hunky, risk-taking Cal--$10,000 that Cal can't get Min in bed within a month. When Cal approaches Min and asks her to dinner, she accepts, all with the purpose of stringing him along and making him lose the bet. Unfortunately, though, a little voice inside her head keeps whispering, "this one," and he keeps kissing her and feeding her Krispy Kreme donuts and brings her a cat and introduces her to a great Italian restaurant named Emilios and keeps kissing her... You get the point. She's hooked, even though she doesn't want to be.

Cal has no interest in winning the bet, considering he never agreed to it the first place. But something about Min intrigues him. Maybe it's her voluptuous body. Maybe it's her wit and intelligence. Maybe it's her shoes. Or maybe it's the look she gets on her face every time he puts a piece of chocolate-glazed donut in her mouth. Something about Min attracts him, and he can't stay away. Granted, it doesn't help that his brain keeps whispering, "this one" to him while he's kissing her, either.

Bet Me is a classic tale of opposites attracting, only to find that they have more in common than they realize. The story itself is well-written, funny (in fact, downright hilarious at times), smart and extremely enjoyable. I read the first 3/4 of it within a few hours, which is definitely saying something considering how little time I have to devote to reading these days (plus, it's a testament to just how fast Crusie's writing reads). The romance progressed nicely between Min and Cal, and I thought that framing it against Cal's ex-girlfriend's relationship theories was a fantastic idea. In fact, I even found myself slightly sympathetic to Cal's psychologist, theory-laden girlfriend Cynthie--while she came across as a bit of a man-eater, she really did love Cal and simply had her priorities a little screwed up. David, however, needed to be kicked in the knee.

The book is also full of a great cast of secondary characters, with their own romances to complement Min and Cal's, not to mention adding depth to both main characters. Reading their stories made me feel like these people could be my friends, too (hell, they reminded me of a lot of my friends, to be honest), and I was rooting for them all the way.

Despite being a romantic comedy, Crusie does present some more serious issues that the characters have to deal with. First, obviously, is Min's weight. While Crusie never comes out and says just how big Min is, I somehow got the impression that she was around a size 14, maybe 12, which is right there on the borderline between straight sizes and plus sizes. Cal thinks Min is beautiful just the way she is, but Min has a different opinion, largely thanks to her mother who's obsessed with staying thin and avoiding carbs. Her mother comes across as being pretty verbally and emotionally abusive at times, and it's really no wonder that Min (and even her sister Diana, to an extent) has body image issues.

Cal has his own set of serious issues to deal with. He's dealt with dyslexia his entire life, and as a result was constantly berated by his father and his peers and called "stupid." When he declined his father's invitation to join the family firm and instead started his own business with his two best friends, that only helped to stir up more resentment between father and son. Throw in a chilly mother and a brother who's following in their father's footsteps, and Cal has his own self esteem issues to deal with.

Granted, Crusie doesn't dive completely to the depths of these things, but she definitely does more than skim the surface. I love it when a romantic comedy does something like this--gives a character a serious issue, makes them deal with it, but does so in a way that isn't preachy or After School Special-ish. As a result, Min and Cal were very well-rounded characters who both grew and became better than they were at the beginning of the book.

There were only two things that remotely bothered me, but they were so small that they didn't take away from my enjoyment of it as a whole. The first is a nitpicky thing, but I found it hard to believe that Cal noticed Min's shoes as much as he did. Sure, she wore some odd shoes, but most straight men I know could care less about women's shoes unless they're coming off the woman along with the rest of her clothes. I also wish Crusie would have continued the recurring bets that she started with in the beginning. Min and Cal kept betting each other ten bucks on different things. Min kept winning. But somewhere about a third of the way through, the bet thing got dropped. I really would have liked to have seen Crusie continue that thread, as it was fun but also illustrated perfectly their different personality traits.

Overall, the book read very fast and was quite enjoyable to read. I laughed out loud on several occasions, and loved the fact that it was so unabashadly fairy-tale romantic. And of course, we all know I loved reading about a not-skinny heroine.

I would definitely recommend this book, and I have a feeling I'll end up picking up at least one or two more of Crusie's books to read in the future (anyone have any suggestions?). show less

I had heard about this author before and was even convinced that I had read one of her books. But it turned out to be my first book by Jennifer Crusie. And I really enjoyed it. I think I was in the mood for something like that.

I am very picky about humor in my books. Few things make me laugh, and many more things irritate me. In this book, humor is really good, light and not exaggerated. I laughed a few times. And I was very rarely annoyed with it.

The characters are also well constructed. In some of the funny books, characters are a little silly. But not here. Of course, not all actions taken by Min and Cal are fully rational but, apart from one scene of a great quarrel at the end, their actions are quite rational. In general, Min and show more Cal are very nice characters. Supporting characters also deserve praise - especially Min and Cal's friends. It's nice to read about a group of friends who really support each other. The families add a whole deeper dimension to the story.

I also liked the plot. It's a bit of a satire on all those theories about relationships and love. And of course the idea of star-crossed lovers who are destined to each other and the whole universe helps them to be together. Min and Cal trying to beat all those annoying coincidences are really funny. The plot is quite interesting.

There are a lot of dialogues in the book, which is why you read it really quickly and easily. There are basically no long boring scenes. And even the bad characters that plot against the main characters are well developed and act on other reasons than just being malevolent.

I definitely recommend this book and I will probably read other books by this author myself. I was thinking about the rating and if I could I would give it a strong 3.5 stars. show less

I LOVED this book. As I was reading it, my mom walked by and said "That must be a good book, you've got a huge smile on your face." And I did. I was grinning idiotically at this book through most of the time I was reading it. When I wasn't grinning, tears were welling up in my eyes and I felt like my heart was going to break.

Wonderful, multi-faceted characters. Hilarious and often uncomfortable situations. Witty dialogue. All in all, a great read, and very moving.

Yes, this book is pink. (Okay, yours might be blue. But mine is pink.) Yes, it has shoes on the cover. Pink and shoes.

You know it and I know it. This means chick lit.

But this is the apogee of chick lit. This is chick lit for people who do not read chick lit. This is a great, multi-layered, character-driven story packed with humour and style that just happens to be centred around a boy-meets-girl story and to mention, on occasion, shoes.

Min Dobbs is 33, fairly sensible, a conservative dresser, risk averse but mostly comfortable in her own skin. Being sensible, she knows she'll never be skinny, but she also knows her appearance will never break mirrors, and once her sister's wedding is over and her mother gets off her back about being show more able to fit into her bridesmaid dress she'll be going back to eating butter and doughnuts with a (nearly) clear conscience. She has wit, intelligence, a good (if slightly dull) job and and very good friends. She is, moreover, a nice person.

She also has a horrible ex, David. What Min really hates about David is not the fact that he dumped her because she wouldn't sleep with him (although she's not precisely pleased about that), but the fact he did it three weeks before her sister's wedding: now, her mother is nagging her about being dateless as well as being too big for the bridesmaid dress. David was a toad, but he was a toad that was keeping her mother happy. Even toads have some redeeming features.

In a fit of drunken amphibian pique, David bets his business acquaintance Cal a serious chunk of money that Cal cannot seduce Min within a month. Cal tries very hard to tactfully decline the bet, being willing only to bet a pittance on being able to take Min to dinner. He's so tactful, though, that his friends don't notice he's declined the bet.

Cal also has a horrible ex. No, that's possibly unfair. Cal has a deluded ex, who thinks he's still in love with her. Like Min, Cal has wit, intelligence, a good job and very good friends. He is also a nice person. Yes, he takes Min to dinner on a bet, but he soon sees past her boring suit. Cal likes Min. A lot.

Min also likes Cal. But Min doesn't want to like Cal, because she overheard David making the bet and she doesn't realise Cal refused to join in. And this is where things start to get complicated, because Min refuses to take the situation lying down (pun totally intended).

And so Min and Cal's story unfolds, interwoven with several excellent and well-developed plots involving the families, friends and exes of Cal and Min, plus an insane cat named Elvis.

Altogether excellent. Intelligent and fun. And ignore the pink and the shoes: just because this isn't serious and depressing literary fiction doesn't mean it's superficial, inane or irredeemably girly. show less

I don't re-read very often because I just don't have the time, but I just finished re-reading this because I had recommended it to a friend and wanted to make sure it was the satisfying, swoon-worthy, Happy Ever After read that I remembered. It was. And I honestly think I love it even more this time around. There aren't a lot of books where the fat woman gets her prince without having to lose weight or him having a fat fetish. Cal does feed Min, that's true. However, it's because he enjoys seeing the look on her face when she allows herself to enjoy foods she's been denying herself—like bread and olive oil and donuts—because her mother has conditioned her into believing that she should be thin. This book just makes me happy, down to show more my (sadly unpainted) toes and I'm going to be coming down from that book drunk all day. show less

Okay so a lot of the fat phobia - internalized and external - didn't age well BUT this really had some great writing and some really smart observations. Crusie amazes me. Also, in case you can't tell THIS IS A SEX BET BOOK. So fair warning because I Hate Bet Books. They hurt my heart and make me cry but I was already committed to this book prior to figuring that out (I know it's called Bet Me but I am not smart). So, for me, the bet-trope worked so fucking well in this book than in any other bet book I've read.

There was SO MUCH DIALOGUE and that was really difficult to get into at first. Like, so many people are talking to one another constantly - which was kind of genius - but was a big shift for my brain. There is a large cast of show more characters that I did have some problems remembering well. BUT I actually think this would have made an amazing movie (or audioplay). Like is Jennifer Crusie a secret-screenwriter? Because it felt like I was reading a film - in a good way! I loved the epilogue - a tie for favorite epilogues with Kristen Callihan's The Hot Shot.

ps. is that chair scene an homage to Judith Ivory's Untie My Heart? Because I know Crusie loves Ivory! Also, am I going to make Judith Ivory connections appear whenever convenient? Yes. I am. show less

This fast-paced, hysterical romance has to be one of Crusie’s best books. I’ve always loved her banter, but here almost every line is perfect and funny. A story about a commitment phobe, a woman who has viewed herself through her mother’s eyes for too many years, and a shabby cat that loves Elvis Presley's music. This might be classed as a big beautiful woman book, though truly Min is a perfectly normal woman. After reading this, many women will want their own ‘donut pusher’. This doesn’t beat my favourite book of hers, but it’s close, winning on the laughs alone.