Rating: 
Summary: Exciting and hilarious to read
Review: This book is the most hilarious book to read. once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. Jennifer Cruize is a really get author and now because of this book I read all of the other ones. I like them all. It has such an interesting storyline and great characters. I recomend reading "Crazy For You".
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Disappointment
Review: I had heard so many good things about this author, I couldn't wait to find one of her books. Perhaps that's why I disliked this book so much. The humor was smart mouthed, and forced, with no wit, and in some places it was totally inappropriate to the situation. Irma Bombeck or Susan Elizabeth Phillips she is not. The heroine was a classic "I want to be your victim" type, and although she was an art teacher, she apparently had no sense of style or color in her own home, and judging from how she handled her own daughter, she obviously had never taken a child development class while she was getting her teaching certificate. The children in this story talked like adults from a sitcom, and the author's understanding of death and bereavement for both parents who have lost a child and a child who has lost a beloved parent, is so shallow, it's insulting. In this regard, it's a strange small town where the heroine didn't know the local undertaker. Which brings me to a comment about this "typical" small town. Gossip is not cute. It is viscous and ugly and hurts people badly. I grew up in a small town, and viscous gossips were no more liked or admired there than they were in the big city in which I spent my adulthood. Also, the idea that a small town would somehow flaunt justice and "take care of their own" even though their own was a murderer is an insult to every small town in the U.S. In addition, the grandmother whom everyone describes as "feisty" and "gutsy" is a woman who killed her first husband, betrayed her second husband several times, and verbally abuses her daughter and granddaughter in the ugliest possible way. I found nothing cute or admirable about her. The love story in this book was superficial, and the murder mystery was only interesting in that you finally found out why you had to read page upon page of uninteresting gossip (which would be uninteresting even if you knew the people involved). I was so hoping for another Susan Elizabeth Phillips, but this author doesn't even come close.
Rating: 
Summary: Still don't get it...
Review: This is my second Crusie book. I know Ms. Crusie's style is to combine romance and mystery, but I believe she gave both elements short shrift in this book. While I found it funnier than Crazy for You, I still don't find it as amusing as the reviews paint Ms. Crusie's books to be. My favorite scene was the impromptu garage sale. What a perfect revenge against an unfaithful husband! And the best character was Grandma--why wasn't the book about HER as a younger woman? That book would be a riot! Crusie writes well about small-town life and characters. I instantly recognized the mother who was the gossip clearinghouse--every small town has a woman like that. And I also recognized the struggle Maddie would have faced for divorcing her husband. Everyone in that small town really would have considered her crazy to leave him, because, though they seemed to know everything about each other, they really knew very little about the real people behind the image and expectations. Crusie also has a rare gift for conveying the intricacies of the female friendship that spans many, many years of trials, heartaches and triumphs. I know scores of women who have a friendship like Maddie and Tessa's. The remainder of the book was tepid and predictable. I found the daughter annoying, and the romance between the heroine/hero rushed. While they had known ABOUT each other for about twenty-five years, and had even jumped each other as teens, they hadn't really known each other very well. To have them falling madly and permanently in love after a few days' reacquaintance wasn't realistic. This book had incredible potential. I only wish Ms. Crusie would have capitalized on it.
Rating: 
Summary: Second Novel Even Better
Review: I read 'Crazy for You' by Jennifer Crusie when it first came out in paperback, and I loved it, so I went back out to find her first novel 'Tell Me Lies'. However, I liked her second novel better because there wasn't a kid, like Em, stuck in the middle of a marital dispute. I'm glad that Maddie got out of her relationship with that creep of a husband Brent. I'm also happy that she ended up with C.L. Sturgis, and that Em liked him too. The book made me laugh a lot and I could relate to the small town nucleus where everybody knows everybody else's business. I even liked the story book ending, but I really believe that Crusie did an even better job with 'Crazy for You', which I gave 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: I thought this was going to be a darkly funny novel.
Review: The beginning is witty and I thought it was so good. However, the author wasn't able to maintain the humor and by page 200, the book becomes an overblown category romance. Even has the Harlequin Romance Hero clone, C J. The bad boy turned into Mr. Wonderful Husband Material, great in bed, great with the kid, etc. By the time, the cheating husband is finally killed, it comes as no surprise because that paves the way for the standard happily-ever after romance ending. The focus of the book is uneven. It starts out like a novel, then develops into a romance, with a little mystery thrown in the last third of the book. And, all the characters who've been out of school for at least 20 years, are still re-living their high school days/memories. I wanted to say to them Grow Up!
Rating:
Summary: A liberating read for a leisurely Saturday afternoon
Review: Many of the new contemporary romance novels, for some reason, feel the need to be romantic suspense novels. Tell Me Lies is no exception to this trend. Crusie just does it better than most authors, and she evades the trap of focusing too much on the suspense and not enough on the romance. Tell Me Lies is basically the story about a woman, Maddie, who liberates herself. She is the good girl in small-town Frog Point, and she always has been. Maddie has lived for everyone else except for herself up until she realizes that her husband, whom she doesn't really like much, is cheating on her. At this point, C.L., an old bad-boy flame from high school who's just visiting town for a few days, steps in. What happens after that is a big tangle of embezzlement, murder, and adultery that in any other book would have been very dark, intense, and ho-hum. However, Crusie maintains her focus on Maddie, who grows and develops throughout the book in reaction to the chaos around her. I started rooting for Maddie and cheering her on - even when she does things some might consider at least a tad morally corrupt. She has good reasons, if nothing else. And she begins to live for herself instead of her husband, her mother, and the town. It is Maddie's journey that is the most exciting, and the man that she picks up along the way, C.L., isn't so bad himself. The suspense plotline is just a catalyst for the characters to learn and grow, rather than the focus of the book. I did have some concerns while reading the book. Occasionally I thought that it was taking Maddie an awfully long time to come to some pretty obvious conclusions (like that her cheating husband who was scheming to kidnap their daughter was a complete creep who didn't deserve the time of her day). I also was concerned that Maddie seemed to just be jumping from living for her husband to living for C.L., instead of for herself as she purports to do. But Crusie, again, manages to convey to the reader the genuine freedom that Maddie is enjoying. And she does it in such a way that the reader is in on the joke - that Maddie is changing in ways that even C.L. could never have anticipated, and to which he too will probably need to adapt. It's this nuance that really caps off this story of liberation. If you like stories like those written by Susan Elizabeth Phillips - about fun, interesting people who are on an emotional journey, with plots driven more by character development than suspense - you'll like Jennifer Crusie, and you'll like Tell Me Lies.
Rating:
Summary: CRAZY FOR CRUSIE!
Review: , EVERY RED BLOODED WOMAN MUST READ BOTH , 'TELL ME LIES' AND 'CRAZY FOR YOU',AND I CAN'T WAIT TO GET 'WELCOME TO TEMPTATION' I EVEN E-MAILED OPRAH AND TOLD HER SHE HAS TO READ THESE, YOU WILL LOVE THEM! CAN'T PUT THEM DOWN,!
Rating:
Summary: Crusie is a Terrific Storyteller
Review: All right. I admit it. I love the Grandmother in "Tell Me Lies." The crochety character stays with the reader long after the book takes its place on the shelf. The town itself is as much a character as any of the secondary characters, and I like the use of the town as motivation and plot twist. I also liked Crusie's perception of the male mind- and the twist concerning the panties in the car- wonderful attention to detail. The only problem I had with TML is that if my best friend hid a gun that may have been used in a murder in my freezer, I'd rethink my criteria for choosing friends. That and the whole situation could have been cleared up with one phone call. Otherwise, an entertaining read, great storytelling and well worth a few bucks and an afternoon at the pool.
Rating:
Summary: It Covers All The Bases!
Review: This book has sex, love, money, murder, scandal, family, lies, and more. What else does it need? Crusie captures your interest immediately with the heroine, Maddie Faraday, finding a pair of crotchless panties under in her husband's car. Needless to say, they aren't hers. While this book won't become a classic, it was definitely a good read.
Rating:
Summary: wonderfully funny
Review: Jennifer Cruise has yet to disappoint me. Her characters and plots are original and funny. I can never put her books down until I'm done. I've been hooked ever since I read "Strange Bedpersons" (Harlequin Temptations), and this is just another to add to my personal favorites.
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