After Nell Dysart divorced her husband of 22 years, she lost her appetite for everything. Because her friends, Suze and Margie, are worried about her, she gets a job as a secretary at Gabe McKenna's detective agency. Of course, Gabe's biggest clients are also all the men who are or once were in Nell and her friends lives, so it's not like she's getting too fresh a start. Gabe's agency starts looking into a blackmail case involving those men, and things start getting very complicated.This makes it sound like the book is mostly about Nell and Gabe, but it's not. There's Riley, Gabe's partner in the agency, who's been pining over Suze for years. Of course, she doesn't even know he exists, and she's married. Things start getting rocky with her husband (Jack) because he wants her to stay home and look pretty and not go out, get a job, and have a life that doesn't involve him in every aspect - by the way, Suze was once "the other woman" when Jack was married to his second wife. Then there's Margie, who's dating a guy named Budge. Margie drinks a lot because Budge wants her to marry him and that's not what she wants to do. Technically, she's still married to her husband, who left years ago and may be dead, but if she declares him dead then she won't have a convenient excuse for turning down Budge. Also, back to Nell and Gabe, it's not like things are going perfectly for them either. Nell and Gabe fight a lot (and have a lot of make-up sex, but that's not the point) because they're both stubborn as hell. Gabe doesn't want any changes in his life and his agency, and Nell wants to redo everything at the agency and sees any sort of giving in as allowing him to use her as a doormat. Remember, however, that Nell is the secretary, and really, truly should be getting Gabe's approval and input before changing things and replacing furniture instead of railroading over him.Granted, I haven't read many Jennifer Crusie books (I think this is my fifth one), but I'm used to her books being funny, romantic, and frequently heart-tugging and exasperating at the same time. I'm not used to her characters being annoying, rigid, and generally unlikeable, which is how I viewed the characters in this book most of the time. Basically, Riley came off as the most emotionally healthy character, and he was the one dealing with his feelings for Suze by dating/sleeping with anything female (like an undergrad, or Nell). Gabe's resistance to change was understandable, at first, but it got really annoying when he continued to resist even the changes that made sense. Nell acted like a bulldozer in Gabe's agency, and (because of her divorce) she was left with the impression that giving in a little is the same as letting yourself get walked on. Suze is a doormat who thinks she needs a man in her life in order to be complete, and she feels this so wholeheartedly that she's willing to give up having a life of her own in order to have a man around. At first I thought Margie was a bimbo, but it turns out that she was just a perpetual drunk with no tact.None of these characters started to feel like people I'd actually want to get to know until maybe 50 pages before the ending of this 400+ page book. This wasn't the enjoyable, relaxing reading experience I was expecting when I plucked a book with "Crusie" on the cover off of a public library bookshelf. In her dedication, Crusie wrote "For Valerie Taylor, because she tells me when my scenes are boring, my syntax is twisted, and my characters are jerks..." Apparently, Ms. Taylor had her work cut out for her if this is the characters after they were made to be less like jerks, and maybe she should have also been working on telling Crusie to make her characters less like wet washcloths.I don't think romance novel couples have to be perfect and have perfect relationships in order for them to be fun to read about. I do like for there to be something pleasant about their relationships, though. In addition, it probably didn't help (for me, anyway) that all or most of the characters were older than the usual romance novel age, which means they were old enough to be my parents. For example, I think Nell's son was a little over 20.So, if I disliked the book this much, why did I keep reading it?- Jennifer Crusie wrote it, so I was hoping it would get better.- Some of the information about china that Suze, Nell, and Margie were talking about sounded interesting, even if I think Crusie could've edited those bits down more. The Walking Ware and Running Ware sounded like fun, though.- Marlene, the dachshund, was interesting. My family has a dachshund, and, even though he doesn't flirt and act abused for biscuits, he does flirt for belly rubs.(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
“This does not sound like lust.” “Thank God.” “This sounds like luv.” Fast Women is an entertaining contemporary mystery romance. It is about a group of people, who in some sense are all connected to each other. These connections are so complicated that I had to write a list of the characters for myself.The main characters are Nell and Gabe. Gabe is devilish and tempting, Nell is “gracefully efficient” and go-ahead. Nell enters Gabe’s life, and she rearranges not only his office, but his whole life, future, and helps to solve a mystery stuck in the past.I loved it! Loved Nell and Gabe, Suze and Riley, Chloe, Margie, and Marlene!I loved it because this book is filled with comic situations, spirited characters, witty and lively dialogues, and so many emotions!Riley, oh, he is soooo hot… I prefer Riley to Gabe… And there are such colorful secondary characters, Suze, Margie, Jase, Chloe, Lu, Linney, Becca the “Check-Out Girl”, Jack, …oh, too many…The story is exaggerated and real at the same time.Exaggerated, because it is packed with main and subplots, a mystery plot, secondary and tertiary characters, divorces, and lots of wives, murders, blackmailing, investigations, power-fights, quarrels, and secrets. The story also features important issues, such as friendship, family, love versus lust, marriage, adultery, faith, reputation. Real, because it indicates that life is never black or white. You can be insecure, confident, you decide something, then you can change your mind. You may want something, but don’t know how to get it, or don’t dare to get it, or simply don’t know exactly what you want. It also could happen that you just don’t realize that you want it. Sometimes you are just chatting about crazy things, sometimes serious issues. You may keep things in secret, or blab something important out unintentionally. You make mistakes, you can be hurt, then you forgive. Or take revenge.Relationships and connections are complicated, even without murders and blackmailing. The mystery plot adds extra excitement to the story, but Fast Women is a very enthralling novel even without it.The story takes several months, and at the end, not everything is settled, but hopefully heading in positive direction. There is only one thing I was disturbed by and I would be glad if it was omitted: the love relationship of Nell’s son Jase and Gabe’s daughter Lu. I felt it forced and hasty, because they are very young, and it is so weird that their parents are in love with each other too.Originally posted on my blog on July 11, 2012.My favorite quotes.
What do You think about Fast Women (2004)?
yeah, i'm surprised, myself. but it's a different kind of four-star rating. because while there were elements i thought were unsuccessful and dippy characters whose actions confused me, you don't sit down and eat a tub of frosting with a wooden spoon and then complain about the aftertaste.i just don't usually have this much fun with the titles for the bodice rippers society. they are fine, but usually they are trying too hard to be sexxy, which is a total turn-off. this one was goofier, and i think i responded to that, being that way inclined myself.not that i am anything like any of the ladies in this book. i am not myself a headstrong woman who is attracted to a headstrong man and who considers an argument to be foreplay. i am not a young, bosomy blonde in a happy marriage to a considerably older man when i suddenly realize i am not, in fact, happy through the discovery of china egg cups with feet: [image error]
—karen
I love this writer. I’ve read everything she published and I subscribe to her blog. This re-read (it was originally published in 2001) gave me enormous pleasure and induced several laughing fits.The story starts with the protagonist, Nell, coming to a job interview. She is a divorcee, still reeling from her husband’s betrayal after their 22 years of marriage. Her interviewer and potential employer, Gabe, owns a PI agency and he needs an office manager. He picked up her resume. “Why did you leave your last position?”“My boss divorced me.”“That would be a reason,” he said, and began to read. The traditional start to this romantic caper is a camouflage. The story unfolds like a crossroad, leading in several nontraditional directions at once, all interlinked by their inventive creator, Crusie. It’s a comedy, so funny at times I couldn’t read because I laughed too hard. It’s a thrilling mystery with a number of frozen corpses, hidden boxes, and mysterious villains. It’s a story of female friendship and collector china. And above all, it’s a love story: it explores how love starts, how it matures, and how it ends. Both protagonists, Nell and Gabe, are strong, assertive people. As they go about their day-to-day business: managing office or investigating clients, they fall in love. But love is not enough for a successful union, not for them. A couple must learn to compromise, to respect each other and accept each other’s foibles. And they both are old enough to know it.To the reader’s delight, the process of such learning for Nell and Gabe is crammed with distractions: an embezzling former employee, YA children and former spouses, old family secrets and friends with marital problems. This marvelous romp of a novel is written beautifully. About 80% of the text is dialog, and Crusie is definitely a master of dialog. Her snappy and hilarious one-liners or involved and smart verbal expositions propel the plot forward so swiftly, the reader gets a moving sickness just by keeping up. The story twists and turns and whirls around, and the reader can’t close the book until she knows what’s behind the next bend. The little quote above is just a small snippet of the writer’s clean and witty writing style. There were so many other quotes I wanted to include they wouldn’t fit in a regular size review. I ended up including none of them. Read the book instead. One of the subplots concerns Nell’s friend Suze and her collection of Carlton Walking Ware egg cups. The concept was intriguing enough that I Googled it. Below are a few pictures of the walking egg cups – they are real, alright. Quirky too, just like the story.
—Olga Godim
I quite liked this one, as it was frothy and fun but still somehow realistic—Crusie is good at setting up relationships between both the main and the secondary romantic couples which don't rely on external forces to create angst and drama, but rather at showing how repeated patterns of behaviour can ruin relationships without any outside help. I also liked the fact that Crusie is always happy to show her female characters taking genuine pleasure in their food, but not in a neurotic way, and that her heroine is into her forties. There was one thing which niggled at my subconscious, though, and which made my eyebrows rise when I realised what it was: one character with a walk-on part was African-American, and I think in all the Crusies that I've read so far, she's the first character who hasn't been white. Hrm. How much of that is a function of setting (I'm not from the US, but the impression I've gotten is that the Mid-West, where these books are set, is terribly white?), I wonder, and how much is, well, good old white obliviousness?
—Siria
