Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie

[lightreads]

Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


So. As some have noticed, I have ventured with uncertain heart and girded loin into the realm of the romance novel over the past few years. Mostly historical by virtue of the fact I started with Heyer and she wrote, like, seven hundred books. And with the historicals, it’s like reading about the customs of an alien culture, and thinking about it that way is good. The creepy virginity fetishizing, all the arranged marriages, how a girl can be “ruined” by talking to the wrong person – it’s all . . . anthropological to me, and in that detached way, sometimes quite enjoyable.



And then I get to this, a contemporary romance, and . . . oops. Still aliens. It wasn’t just that the characters were in historical romances; apparently just being in a romance novel is enough. I read this book (which was quite funny, as advertised, with a lot of great banter and secondary character color) and I basically think isn’t that a charming custom. Okay, that one’s a bit odd, but I’m trying not to judge . . . Cultural relativism! Cultural relativism!



Because women who don’t just talk about men but who talk only about men, women who try fad diets requiring impossible lengths of self-denial and then don’t understand what’s happening when they inevitably fail and get trapped in a cycle of guilt and self-loathing, people who assume that serial monogamy is the only acceptable way to live, women who say things like, “I’m not going home with you, I bought my own drink,” to their boyfriend . . . I don’t know these people. I am occasionally reminded they exist, but I find them confusing and sometimes quite distressing.



But then I’m reading, and I get to certain scenes. Like where the heroine breaks down in tears because she’s in love, sure, but that’s not a good thing because she’s going to get hurt. And she puts her finger so keenly, so precisely on that -- if you leave me, it will wreck me. The big risk. Or another scene where one woman browbeats another into actually saying what she wants and not not not apologizing for wanting things, to own what she wants and not dismiss it as a fairy tale or stupid or silly. And how hard that is for some women who have been taught for so long not to want, to always be second, to please someone else first.



And in those flashes I would think oh. Maybe we aren’t aliens to each other. Because I understand that completely.



Anyway. It’s a completely absurd, over-the-top bit of silliness that is quite funny in places. And it’s mostly full of aliens. But once in a while it’s really not. And in those times it is keen and true and really very good.



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