Narrated by Madison Vaughn
This is another book I’d already read and enjoyed that I had to hear on audio! It’s like comfort food, macaroni & cheese – you know you’ll enjoy it and feel good at the end. Narrator Madison Vaughn brings a nice, cynical tone to the characters that fits them to a t. It’s filled with Crusie’s trademark witty banter, and Vaughn made me laugh out loud with Nick’s secretary Christine’s dialogue.
It’s an “opposites attract” sort of theme, along the lines of Dharma and Greg. Tess was raised on a commune by hippie parents. She continues their traditions by working as a teacher at a nonprofit foundation that runs a tutoring program for disadvantaged children, and also by protesting the ills of the world, and in general trying to fix everyone and everything. Living according to her principals, she shops at thrift stores, lives in a low-income area, and in general you get the idea she’s trying to minimize her footprint on the world.
Nick was raised in a middle-class, blue-collar family, but attended an Ivy League law school and is now a Republican lawyer hoping to make partner. He’s ambitious but actually not in a cutthroat way. I think it says volumes about his scruples that he refused to make love with Tess in a public parking lot because it’s against the law!
OK, so it also shows him to be a little straight-laced and maybe even stuffy – but he is a lawyer, after all, so not breaking the law seems like a good idea. And it speaks volumes for Tess that, after he refused the car and suggested the bedroom instead, she refused him altogether. She’s not really as open-minded and liberal as she thinks she is.
The verbal sparring in the book was pretty funny – I laughed out loud several times during the short read at the antics. Nick has a dilemma – a famous author the law firm is wooing has specifically asked the lawyers to attend a weekend house party with spouses, and neither Nick nor his buddy Park are married. He goes to Tess – even though now they are no longer dating – and asks her to do this for him as a favor, and to get Park a date too. Tess keeps trying to tell herself their relationship cannot work because they are so diametrically opposed on so many issues, but she likes him as a friend, so she obliges and goes, taking along her best friend Gina. Tess has a hard time realizing what her core values truly are, and what are issues she can bend or compromise on where Nick and others are concerned – the crux of the conflict.
It was a fun story and a great ending. If you are looking for short, hot, funny – this is it.
Melinda
Narration: A
Book Content: A
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: None
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises LTD
This is one Crusie I haven’t listened to on audio. It wasn’t my favorite when I read it in print. Crusie did such a good job of convincing me the main couple were too different to make it that I wasn’t convinced of the HEA at the end. I was glad Tess’s selfishness was called out and she acknowledged it. It made me like her more.
It probably didn’t help that I read this book after I read The Cinderella Deal, which has the same premise and is a much better story, imo.
I did like Nick and Crusie always manages to make me laugh.
Strange Bedpersons is another favorite of mine and I really enjoyed it in audio as well – thanks for the reminder Melinda!
Carrie after Manhunting I read each of the Crusie books as they came out so that gave me a couple of years between Strange Bedpersons and The Cinderella Deal – sounds like that was a good thing!
Manhunting is so much fun!! Great dialogue, especially when the hero goes “fishing.”
I read Crusie as I picked her up, since I only started reading romances about 4 years ago. Fast Women was the first book of hers I read, and I liked it for the most part. But like WTT and several other books by her that had an edge, I was surprised to pick up books like Manhunting and Getting Rid of Bradley that were mostly light-weight.
All this talking about Crusie books has me wanting to go listen to a bunch of them again. Charlie All Night and Anyone But You are so good, too!
Anyone But You is one of the funniest audio romances out there. I need to relisten NOW!
I think I found this one on the “meh” side in print but that could have been a product of my mood at the time. I have this on my TBL – I’ve been vacillating over my next listen. Maybe it will be this one. :)
I finished this one this morning. It was a lot of fun on audio and I enjoyed it a lot more than in print. A function of time, the planetary alignment and a great narrator I think :)
Glad you enjoyed it and your right K, Madison Vaughn brought just the right touch to the narration of this Crusie – I don’t think I’ve heard her do anything else though – I’ll have to look her up.