Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collections
Publication
Brilliance Audio (2004), Edition: ABRIDGED Audiobook, Downloadable WMA/MP3 Audiofile, 6 hrs 9 mins
Description
After finding a pair of black lace panties under the front seat of her husband's car and cavorting herself in the back seat of another vehicle with her old high-school flame, Maddie Faraday realizes that the truth is elusive in a small town.
User reviews
LibraryThing member magst
You know it's a good book when you laugh out loud and cry at the same time. It has the right mix of suspense, humor, sarcasm, sexual interludes, and interesting characters that end up make it a wonderful read. This novel has all of the warmth and charm readers have come to expect from Crusie.
LibraryThing member MuseofIre
The first of Crusie's books I ever read, it remains one of my favorites. Yes, Maddie does some dumb things, but I like her. I really like the way the small-town miasma of gossip and expectations colors the actions of all the characters.
LibraryThing member nevacampbell
A little too romance-novel and a confusing mystery. But I read it until the end because I like the character C.L.
LibraryThing member sugar17820
I loved this book. Once I got into it I just could not put it down. You gotta love C.L. He's great!
LibraryThing member whimsyblue
Oh, there is a scene in this book that I laughed aloud until I howled! My friend and I still talk about it after sharing the book! Loved this one!
LibraryThing member melissam322
Maddie had what she thought was an OK life. Sure she didn't really like her husband much, but she had a great daughter with him. Then it happened. She found a pair of crotchless panties in his car. She decides she's not going to take this kind of betrayal (again) and confronts him. At the same time
Before she knows it Maddie is knee deep in a murder investigation and lies, lies, lies.
This is a very entertaining read, much like Crusie's other books. Quirky, steamy and romantic with a twist.
Show More
an old flame comes back into town and all hell breaks loose.Before she knows it Maddie is knee deep in a murder investigation and lies, lies, lies.
This is a very entertaining read, much like Crusie's other books. Quirky, steamy and romantic with a twist.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kikilon
Smalltown mentality at its worst, this book spins a complex net of human interrelations. Everybody's guilty. It's witty and a great character study.
LibraryThing member kayceel
This is light reading - Crusie almost always is, and that's not a bad thing. This one isn't as fun as some of her others (God, how I loved Welcome to Temptation!), but it's just as sexy! Beware - her characters get busy often and we the readers get MANY details!
LibraryThing member kikianika
Smalltown mentality at its worst, this book spins a complex net of human interrelations. Everybody's guilty. It's witty and a great character study.
LibraryThing member miyurose
This was my first Jennifer Crusie read, and I was pleased with it for the most part. Maddie is a pretty average mom and wife, living in a small town where not only does everyone know your business, but they’ll tell your mother too. Having grown up in a town of 1200 people (in a good year), I can
Some readers have mentioned that the police investigation(s) in this book don’t make a whole lot of sense, but I am 100% capable of suspending disbelief in a story like this — it’s not meant to be a police procedural. The one part of the book that really bothered me was her husband’s death. His murder is announced on the back of the book, but you are 60% of the way through the book (literally!) before he actually kicks it. This meant I spent several chapters asking, 'Is he dead yet?' 'Maybe he’s dead now?' only to have him show up in the next scene. I would have preferred to have that little tidbit held back, thank you very much.
Despite that, I enjoyed the story enough to read more of Crusie’s work.
Show More
relate. Maddie was a little flightly and irrational (throwing away the evidence of your husband’s infidelity? leaving suspiciously found cash where it can be found?), but likable enough. I also liked C.L. as the reformed, torch-carrying bad boy. I was a little iffy on her daughter, Emily, and questioned whether the scenes from her point of view were really necessary or just there to force us into some emotional connection with her.Some readers have mentioned that the police investigation(s) in this book don’t make a whole lot of sense, but I am 100% capable of suspending disbelief in a story like this — it’s not meant to be a police procedural. The one part of the book that really bothered me was her husband’s death. His murder is announced on the back of the book, but you are 60% of the way through the book (literally!) before he actually kicks it. This meant I spent several chapters asking, 'Is he dead yet?' 'Maybe he’s dead now?' only to have him show up in the next scene. I would have preferred to have that little tidbit held back, thank you very much.
Despite that, I enjoyed the story enough to read more of Crusie’s work.
Show Less
LibraryThing member sdbookhound
Not my favorite, but still a good Jennifer Crusie read.
LibraryThing member MsBeautiful
Could not get into the story line
LibraryThing member Capnrandm
Though this was on my "Read" shelf, I could swear this is the first time I met C.L. and Maddie. This may be the very best of Crusie's heartbreak-and-heist type stories, with a believable plot to compliment the very wonderful characters. I particularly love that Maddie's wayward husband, while not
Show More
often present, is certainly humanized and mourned. Show Less
LibraryThing member Steph1203
Loved it! I wasn't expecting some of the twists at all! Gotta pick up her other books!
LibraryThing member Dawn772
This story was rather absorbing although it led me all over the place, sometimes humorous and other times very serious. The heroine varied between a flighty pushover and a strong sensitive woman but I was still intrigued. Maddie finds evidence her husband is cheating and accountant C.L. is
Show More
investigating him for possibility of swindling someone. Show Less
LibraryThing member Spurts
Funny moments and another enjoyable Jennifer Crusie novel. More along the lines of "cozy mystery" than usual for author. Synopsis at this site accurate so not going to re-summarize the plot.
LibraryThing member murderbydeath
My re-read of this book has been an interesting, eye-opening experience of how time and life can alter one's view of a story.
Maddie Faraday is the "Good Girl" in a small town run on gossip, and married to her high school sweetheart, Brent, the "Golden Boy" of Frog Point, who predictably can't keep
I remember this book being a fun romp with some moderately steamy sex scenes when I first read it lo those many years ago. It's still a fun romp with some moderately steamy sex scenes, but this time around it was also...confronting. This time around I'm on the other side of a marriage implosion and a good chunk of this story felt very real, very plausible. Maddie's meltdown, Brent's avoidance, the anger, the confrontation, that very desperate moment Maddie has with a half bottle of wine in her hand: it all felt like it came from a place of personal experience (for the author - not me). Losing herself in C.L. also felt authentic if not intelligent.
This is chick-lit, so it goes without saying that the story has a happy, if overly convenient, ending, but the middle is a bit more raw than anything else I've read of Crusie's.
There's a mystery element to this story as well, and it was really well crafted; the suspect so deeply buried in the narrative that I never had a clue. A very good read and not quite as frivolous as one would think from the term "chick-lit".
Maddie Faraday is the "Good Girl" in a small town run on gossip, and married to her high school sweetheart, Brent, the "Golden Boy" of Frog Point, who predictably can't keep
Show More
it in his pants. C.L. was the bad boy in high school who long ago shared one very steamy night with Maddie in the back of a car; the culmination of a long-standing crush on his part, and an act of revenge on hers. Now, 20 years later, C.L. is back - mature, still sexy, and an accountant - to do a favour for his ex-wife, by looking at the books of the construction company Brent co-owns. All hell breaks loose.I remember this book being a fun romp with some moderately steamy sex scenes when I first read it lo those many years ago. It's still a fun romp with some moderately steamy sex scenes, but this time around it was also...confronting. This time around I'm on the other side of a marriage implosion and a good chunk of this story felt very real, very plausible. Maddie's meltdown, Brent's avoidance, the anger, the confrontation, that very desperate moment Maddie has with a half bottle of wine in her hand: it all felt like it came from a place of personal experience (for the author - not me). Losing herself in C.L. also felt authentic if not intelligent.
This is chick-lit, so it goes without saying that the story has a happy, if overly convenient, ending, but the middle is a bit more raw than anything else I've read of Crusie's.
There's a mystery element to this story as well, and it was really well crafted; the suspect so deeply buried in the narrative that I never had a clue. A very good read and not quite as frivolous as one would think from the term "chick-lit".
Show Less
LibraryThing member SharonMariaBidwell
Seriously well-plotted romance mystery, which I liked and disliked as I read through and ended up loving. The parts I disliked seemed messy — Maddie not acting as I thought any sane woman would, or people forgiving others where forgiveness might be questionable — but by story’s end I realised
Show More
it worked because people don’t act as they should, life is messy, and maybe we should all be a little more forgiving especially when no one is perfect. I came to love Maddie’s grandmother perhaps the most — her character sums up the essence of the book perfectly, even though at first that doesn’t seem like an endorsement. Many of Crusie’s earlier work is short, still well-plotted, but light fun. This is all of those things and more, showing that imperfection can be okay, even preferable sometimes, not to worry so much about what the neighbours think, and it’s also fine to be occasionally selfish. And how it feels good to stand up to dominating relatives sometimes. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1998-02-16
Physical description
7.3 inches
ISBN
1423302397 / 9781423302391
Local notes
Maddie’s troubles begin when she finds another woman’s underpants under the front seat of her husband’s car, and things go downhill from there. Her daughter Emily wants a dog, her mother wants gossip, her best friend’s hiding something, and then the guy she lost her virginity to twenty years before shows up looking for her husband. That’s just the first chapter.
On her way to self-actualization and a worthy lover, a small-town girl enters a classic merry chase of general upheaval. It all begins when Maddie Faraday of Frog Point, Ohio--where gossip is the major sport and everyone knows everyone elses' business--finds a pair of crotchless black lace underpants under the seat of her husband's Cadillac. Like an Erma Bombeck fem-me, whose personal sphere is defined by fixing her broken microwave and washing her dirty macaroni-and-cheese skillet, Maddie (who calls herself ``the perpetual virgin of Frog Point'') has always been a good girl, a good wife, a good daughter, and a good mother to her precious eight-year-old daughter Em. But the discovery of a few triangles of illicit lace begins a weekend that sees the uprooting of Maddie's entire life.
Right in the middle of her tumultuous morning, C.L. Sturgis, a ``rebel without a clue'' who long ago took Maddie's virginity and has grown up 20 years later into a hot-looking accountant (there's been a dearth of rugged CPAs in recent romance fiction) appears at her door, looking for her husband, Brent. Brent, it seems, is suspected of embezzling a lot of money. Then, as if a bad morning and a marriage spent cleaning up Egg McMuffin wrappers weren't enough, Maddie's car is totaled and she suffers a concussion. Plus which Brent, who's disappointed a whole posse of Frog Pointers, is found shot in the head on a former lovers' lane. The identity of the killer is fairly obvious; somewhat implausibly, Maddie grows estranged from C.L. Still, for lovers of chocolate brownies, fairly explicit sex, and heroines who let it all hang out, an entertaining hardcover debut.
On her way to self-actualization and a worthy lover, a small-town girl enters a classic merry chase of general upheaval. It all begins when Maddie Faraday of Frog Point, Ohio--where gossip is the major sport and everyone knows everyone elses' business--finds a pair of crotchless black lace underpants under the seat of her husband's Cadillac. Like an Erma Bombeck fem-me, whose personal sphere is defined by fixing her broken microwave and washing her dirty macaroni-and-cheese skillet, Maddie (who calls herself ``the perpetual virgin of Frog Point'') has always been a good girl, a good wife, a good daughter, and a good mother to her precious eight-year-old daughter Em. But the discovery of a few triangles of illicit lace begins a weekend that sees the uprooting of Maddie's entire life.
Right in the middle of her tumultuous morning, C.L. Sturgis, a ``rebel without a clue'' who long ago took Maddie's virginity and has grown up 20 years later into a hot-looking accountant (there's been a dearth of rugged CPAs in recent romance fiction) appears at her door, looking for her husband, Brent. Brent, it seems, is suspected of embezzling a lot of money. Then, as if a bad morning and a marriage spent cleaning up Egg McMuffin wrappers weren't enough, Maddie's car is totaled and she suffers a concussion. Plus which Brent, who's disappointed a whole posse of Frog Pointers, is found shot in the head on a former lovers' lane. The identity of the killer is fairly obvious; somewhat implausibly, Maddie grows estranged from C.L. Still, for lovers of chocolate brownies, fairly explicit sex, and heroines who let it all hang out, an entertaining hardcover debut.
Other editions
Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie (Paperback)