Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie
Paperback, 496 Pages
2011, St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 031266852X
Synopsis
Nell Dysart's in trouble. Weighed down by an inexplicable divorce and a loss of appetite for everything, Nell is sleepwalking through life until her best friend finagles a job for her with a shabby little detective agency that has lots of potential and a boss who looks easy to manage.
Gabe McKenna isn't doing too well, either. His detective agency is wasting time on a blackmail case, his partner has decided he hates watching cheating spouses for money, and his ex-wife has just dumped him...again. The only thing that's going his way is that his new secretary looks efficient, boring, and biddable.
But looks can be deceiving and soon Nell and Gabe are squaring off over embezzlement, business cards, vandalism, dog-napping, blackmail, Chinese food, unprofessional sex, and really ugly office furniture, all of which turn out to be the least of their problems. Because shortly after that, somebody starts killing people. And shortly after that, they start falling in love...
Review
I generally enjoy Jennifer Crusie's romances, but Fast Women never hit its stride. Nell is sad most of the time. Even when she starts becoming empowered, she comes off more bossy and annoying than strong and self-confident. Without a likeable main character to root for any enjoyment I got out of the romance was completely one sided.
Nell had the potential to be great. Once she finally started getting angry, she became a whole other woman. And then, unfortunately, instead of settling into a likeable combination of confident and fun, she became grating with her incessant need to have everything exactly to her liking. Gabe, Nell's boss and love interest, is her exact opposite in most ways, but his rigid need for things to stay the same, much like Nell's need to change things, crosses the line from quirky to obnoxious rather quickly.
A decent mystery makes the book readable, while Gabe's partner Riley completely steals the show. Instead of caring about whodunit or whether Gabe and Nell can make the relationship work, I only really cared about what Riley was doing. He was easygoing, fun and carried almost the entire book. Now, had the book been about him I probably would have loved it.
Fast Women was hard to get through simply because the two characters I should have cared about most were the ones I wished would just go away. Secondary characters like Riley, Gabe's ex-wife Chloe and Nell's friend Suze make the book as good as it is and Fast Women is worth a read is only to meet them.
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