My
Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Lucy Armstrong normally
directs television commercials with dogs because the dogs are easy to work
with. Then her sister, Daisy, calls to ask her to direct the last four days of
an action movie and Lucy reluctantly agrees to help out, mainly so that she can
spend time with her niece, Pepper. However, the film’s stunt coordinator is
Lucy’s ex-husband, who seems to be under the impression that she is still in
love with him and then the lead actor turns up with Captain J.T. Wilder, his
Green Beret advisor. As Lucy tries to workout why a romantic comedy requires so
many stunts, she has to handle neurotic actors, a very pushy Irish backer and
her niece’s new obsession with Wonder Woman. J.T. soon finds that he has been
maneuvered on to the set by the CIA and that there is someone out in the swamps
trying to kill him. Casting her single eye over proceedings is the alligator,
Moot, who is always happy to snack on anybody stupid enough to invade her
swamp.
The main reason that I
picked up this book was because the book group read ‘Agnes and the Hitman’ by
the same pair of authors and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Both books make good use
of the different strengths of the two authors. Ms Crusie has a witty, funny
voice that makes her heroines very appealing and sympathetic, whilst Mr Mayer
gives us manly men who are confused by women in general but helpless to
withstand the powerful attraction of the particular woman in the book. Both books follow a
similar basic outline: a strong woman is plunged into a dangerous situation and
becomes reliant upon, and passionately involved with, a military man as the
action carries them along. They both also have a strong cast of secondary
characters that are fully realized and well rounded, so that they are more than
just plot devices. The suspense and action has real danger behind it, and the
leading lady plays a significant role in defeating the adversaries: she is no
shrinking violet, but courageous and resourceful, providing her knight in
shining armor with some much-needed back up.
I have to assume that Ms
Crusie writes the sections from Lucy’s POV, whilst Mr Mayer handles those from
the male perspective, however there is no obvious difference in style, so that
there is only one ‘voice’ throughout. I found the mixture of Romance elements
with Suspense / Action enjoyable, but the real selling point of the book are
the characters and relationships that are set up. Young Pepper is just
delightful, and so funny, bopping about in her Wonder Woman outfit. She is the
grounding center to her little family and all the relationships revolve around
her to a certain extent. This provides a way for our protagonists to spend time
together whilst still being antagonistic, and also supplies a great reason for
them to cooperate later on.
I did have a slight
problem with J.T.’s dalliance with the lead actress, but she was naked in his
bed, and it did make a nice change for the protagonists to not be all doe-eyed
about each other from the beginning. Also, the motives of Nash, the ex-husband,
were interesting: for him to be genuinely interested in renewing his
relationship with Lucy would have been far too simple. As the book progresses
his grip on reality gets more and more tenuous, until he descends into truly
bizarre behavior. I guess the character that was the most difficult to accept
was Daisy: although we get some explanation for her behavior, she still seems
like a really bad mom for most of the book.
Whilst writing my reviews
I always have a look at what other people have said about the book in question.
In this case, I found a lot of people who were really unimpressed by it, for
example, Lesley Dunlap at The Romance Reader and Jane at Dear Author. It seems
that they had read a lot of Ms Crusie’s work before this one and were expecting
more of a straight Romance, which this is not. However, I did find people who
had enjoyed it, such as author Lauren Dane, so I feel a little less strange in
saying that it was a good, fun read.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please let me know what you think, because comments make me happy!
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.