Crazy for You/Tell Me Lies

I've been on Jennifer Crusie-kick for the last few months, after I read one of her novels for the first time, and I think she's now one of my favorite authors. This book -- two novels in one volume -- is a great buy for the price. These are two of Crusie's earlier novels, and they are a little different from novels like BET ME, but the story is just as good. The best things about Jennifer Crusie's novels: 1. The heroines aren't rich, pampered, spoiled, blonde heiresses trying to make their lives useful. 2. The women aren't skinny size two or four stick figures with compulsive eating and exercise habits. 3. No one is obsessed with money, inheritances, status, or murder. 4. The stories are about real, complex relationships between families, friends and lovers. 5. There is real romance, even for women who aren't rich or perfect. The first novel in this edition, CRAZY FOR YOU, is about Quinn McKenzie, and her realization that she does not want to live the same life and the same safe routine every day for the rest of her life. Her desire to make one small change in her life -- adopting a dog, even though her apartment does not allow them -- snowballs out of control. Quinn and her friends realize how many people have stopped noticing and appreciating things that are right in front of them, including themselves and loved ones, and many are inspired to try to make their lives and experiences feel new again. The struggles of Quinn and her friends touch some important issues related to love, marriage, relationships, committment, appreciation, and loneliness. TELL ME LIES is about a woman named Maddie Faraday. Maddie's cheating husband (cheating in more ways than one, and more people than just her) and his subsequent murder prompt her to shake up her life and provide her small time with something to talk about as she decides to start telling the truth to everyone, shed her "nice-girl" image, and make her own happiness a priority. Neither of these books is really as good as BET ME or FAKING IT, in my opinion, but I greatly enjoyed both, and you can see a bit of Crusie's story-telling evolution. These stories are definitely different than the stories of the single, independent girls in the other Crusie novels that I have read.