I liked Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me better than Faking It, her last solo novel. Bet Me has no murders and so no tone mismatch. And in what is possibly a first for me, I was able to keep track of all eight characters introduced in the opening chapter.
This book is a fairy tale—it starts with “Once upon a time” and ends with “happily ever after”—and is about fairy tales, ripping them apart and then putting them back together properly. Some small parts of the plot only make sense when viewed as part of a fairy tale; I’m not sure if I buy them even with those genre conventions in mind. Also, the middle seems a bit slow. However, it was very good post-vacation piecemeal reading and would probably be a good place to start reading Crusie’s novels.