Crusie, Jennifer: Fast Women

Yay, mini-vacations. We didn’t have class after Tuesday last week, and no assignments either, so I used the break to catch up, both on the work that I fell behind on because of this whole getting-married thing [1], and on my sleep and leisure time. (The sleep was actually a problem: it seemed that once my body got into AC and realized it could sleep, it decided it ought to sleep—all the time.) Jennifer Crusie’s latest paperback, Fast Women, was perfect mini-vacation reading: funny and quick and engaging and non-stupid.

In my very first post to this book log, I talked about how genre romance novelists tended to move to mainstream by throwing in gratuitous dead bodies and ghosts and whatnot. Crusie is an exception. Her earlier novels were often rather plot-full, particularly with mysteries; she’s mostly added characters to make her mainstream novels longer. She also manages to keep the plot of Fast Women towards the forefront throughout the book, making it feel less lumpy than many similiar efforts. However, the plot, mysterious goings-on in a detective agency, does feel a bit forced in its connections to the book’s story, marriage—which the book is none too subtle about. The relationship of the main characters is also resolved a bit quickly for my taste.

Reading this over, it sounds a bit perfunctory, for which I apologize. I enjoyed this a lot, and it engaged me enough that I spent time thinking about it instead of tossing it aside; but I’m already back in the grind, and I don’t have time to do a more thorough job of it.

[1] A few pictures are now up, in case anyone cares.

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