Rating: 
Summary: Shoes Shoes Shoes.....
Review: A girl can not have enough good shoes. This book has plenty. Not only shoes but great characters that keep you wanting to know more about them and the relationships that are built from this book. I love Jennifer Crusie and this book has become my new favorite by her.
The love trinagles are great and the story keeps you laughing all the way to the end. There are a few parts of the book you do not see coming and it only adds to this great story.
Go and read it right now! You will not be disapointed!!
Got to love Jennifer Crusie!
Rating: 
Summary: Bet Me is a spunky and charming novel
Review: Bet Me is a fabulous book. Though it had a rough start, it really picked up towards the end. The main plot of the book is about Minerva Dobbs, a practical, sworn off of men, carb counter, who is being swooned by Cal. Cal is a serial dater that always wins his bets. When Cal recieves a bet to try to make Min fall in love with him, his world goes crazy. To make it worse, Min knows about the bet. First, they argue over everything and decide not to see each other, but fate has other plans. Where ever they go, they accidently bump into each other. They each finally realize that they love one another. Min tells Cal that she knows about the bet and he decides to throw it, but Min decides the prize is to great to risk. Ten thousand dollars and true love is too precious to let go.
Rating:
Summary: Read and re-read
Review: Crusie is the best in contemporary romantic fiction- but you've got to like some laughs; if passionate pathos and despair are your thing, you won't be pleased. Bet Me is at the top of my list of her books, though Faking It and Welcome to Temptation are duking it out for pure entertainment value. Her dialogue and situations are outstanding. Her books step on the edges of suspension of disbelief without ever going near the shores of Dynasty type writing. Her characters are fully rounded with flaws, families and friends that just make us like them more. Reading a Crusie novel is the best form of escapism. She has a fabulous sense of humor and her heros are perfect for being so far from perfect and therefore believable fantasies. She writes a sex scene like no one else. The hero is never virile and unbelievably potent and the gasps usually (initially) come from something stuck in the cushions under the couch. Then they deal. The most unlikely, yet lovely, aspect is that her heros want to talk and figure out how to do better in the future. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: My First (and not last) Crusie
Review: For months I've had "Bet Me" sitting on the top of my TBR pile. A good friend just raved about Jennifer Crusie, and since I'd turned her into a Suzanne Brockmann fan, she felt justified in turning me toward Crusie's collective works. So when I finally got around to opening this book, it was with great expectation.
I'm glad to say that I wasn't let down. "Bet Me" was such a treat to read. The humor was wonderful, and I was immediately taken with both the hero, Calvin Morrisey, and the heroine, Minerva Dobbs.
Instantly the characters had a chemistry with each other despite the fact that they both tried to fight it through nearly the entire book. What was exceptionally clever is how Crusie brought attention to this connection by using a secondary character - a psychologist ex-girlfriend of Cal's - to list clues indicating if the couple was developing feelings, only to have those very clues show up in Cal and Minerva's interactions with each other.
The only problems I had with this book were Minn's mother and Minn's obsession with her weight. Minn's mother was so extreme in her nastiness - in her complete fixation on her daughter's physical appearance and disapproval of same - that she almost came off as a cartoon character. I kept waiting for Minn to turn around and smack the woman, mother or not, especially given that Minn felt no compunction in speaking her mind to every other character. And while it was completely understandable why Minn herself was so obsessed with her weight, it really became annoying that it was such a significant obstacle between Cal and Minn. Cal never expressed anything but appreciation for Minn's figure, yet Minn could not let him forget that it was less than her definition of perfect.
Still, it was refreshing to read about a woman who didn't conform to society's (and romance readers') expectation of physical perfection and an amazing, sexy desirable man who loved her all the same. The dialogue between these two was wonderfully real, fast paced and at times, wicked. Once they allowed their passion to run free, the scenes were downright steamy.
I've already got a whole stack of Crusie's just begging to be read. I can only hope they are all as good as "Bet Me".
Rating:
Summary: Best one liners...
Review: Great read - I stayed up until 3 so I could finish in one setting. Wonderful main characters that were so real and genuine they felt like a breath of fresh air in the world of 'cookie cutter' hero/ines. The author did a wonderful job of matching up this odd-ball pair with sly witt and laugh-out-loud humor. The secondary characters were intersting and multi-demensional, people you actually wanted to read about versus filler material. Crusie wrapped it all up with her killer writting style and so fun one liners i.e. "Min's father met them in the hall, a lumbering man with a shock of blond hair and heavy white eyebrows who should have been hearty and welcoming but instead had the vaguely paranoid look of a sheepdog whose sheep were plotting against him." The reason I rated this a 4 is that the main character Min was overweight and could not be comfortable with herself (until the latter part of the book). Her boyfriend, Cal, was understanding, supportive, and completely comfortable with her size but she wasn't. As a result I felt uncomfortable for her through the majority of the book. I realize that the character was 'in process' and her outlook had changed dramatically by the end still this is why a 4 not a 5. Give me a chubby character who is comfortable in their identity and secure with their self image and you get a 5! This was my first of Crusie and it will not be my last, I plan on getting the rest of them and hoping that they all will be as fun, intersting, and entertaining as 'Bet Me' Worth your time and money!
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Summary: My very first Jennifer Crusie...
Review: I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS. I cannot belive that every reader on here has not rated it 5 stars! What a FUN book! I LOVED Cal. I thought he was sweet, clever, charming, and [very attractive]...and as for Min...Oh My Gosh...She was a riot! The dialogue was unbelievable! I have never read dialogue like that in my life! It sounded so real it was hard to believe that these were only two made up characters speaking and not real people!Im so sad that its over! I am so excited to have found Jennifer Crusie. I fully intend to hunt down and purchase everything I can find that she has put out there... "Bet Me" is one book that I will be reading over, and over, and over...A DEFINITE KEEPER.
Rating: 
Summary: I figured out why its not great
Review: I am listening to the CD, after giving the book a quick read when it came out. The premise is great, but the dialog gets boring because its all "xx"Cal Said then "xx"Min Said "xx"Bonnie said "xxx"David Said. The word SAID must have been used 10,000 times in this book. It slows down otherwise snappy dialogue.
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Summary: cheesy romance done right
Review: I couldn't put this book down - after I read it I had to go right back to some good parts. It's standing up excellently to re-reading: it was just as funny the third time as it was the first two. Jenny herself described this as a "cheesy romance". There is no suspense element, and the plot is not only straightforward, but extensively foreshadowed. These are not flaws, because the writing is wonderful, the dialogue is hilarious, and the characters are interesting, as usual. I particularly liked how true everything was; there are at least six different theories of love and relationships among the various characters, all of which turn out to apply to the protagonists. In recent books by Ms. Crusie there is usually some element a bit over the top; in "Bet Me" it's the fairy tale themes. How many actuaries get to play Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Snow White, a girl who cries wolf, and the Beast in the course of a single story? Crusie writes contemporary romances in much the way Dorothy L. Sayers wrote mysteries, or Lois McMaster Bujold writes science fiction, or Georgette Heyer wrote Regencies. Which is to say excellently well, but with no two books quite alike. In particular, they don't tend to repeat themes. If you like the writers voice, and enjoy watching her grow and change, this is wonderful. It does lead to different readers having different favorite books. This week my own favorite Crusie is probably "Faking It", but tastes vary. Fortunately it doesn't matter much; they're all very good. If you insist on suspense with your romance, try Jayne Ann Krentz or Nora Roberts instead. If you want a story more focused on a serial heartbreaker hero, try Catherine Asaro's SF novel "The Last Hawk". If you want a recent fairy tale romance as fantasy rather than as a contemporary, try "The Fairy Godmother" by Mercedes Lackey. If you love "Bet Me" and want more straight contemporary romance, try Susan Elizabeth Phillips. If you really need the same theme over and over, stick to authors like Stephanie Laurens instead. Jenny went on to suggest "... the world needs more cheese". I'm from Wisconsin, where we heartily agree with that sentiment. Especially when it produces books as wonderful as "Bet Me".
Rating:
Summary: Mildly amusing, but not much of a plot.
Review: I have to agree with other reviewers that Ms. Crusie's last two efforts (BET ME and FAKING IT) have not been up to par with her usual standards of excellence. Although the characters are likeable and there are some witty lines, the book lacks any kind of plot. It consists mostly of couples pairing off in a singles bar. It reminds me of "Seinfeld" meets "The Dating Game" (which is not a compliment since I don't care for either show).
Also, I felt the author threw in some things to try to please everyone. Min is overweight and carb conscious. The bartender (who is also Cal's neighbor) is a Lesbian. One couple decides to remain childless, which disappointed me because they both like children and it is pointed out a couple of times in the book that they would make beautiful children. I will continue to read Ms. Crusie's books, but hope for better in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Lack of pronouns distracting
Review: I know this is a trivial matter, but I've been listening to "Bet on Me" on CD over the past day or so on a long road trip. I find the "Min said," "Cal said," "Nannette said," etc. very distracting. In a conversation between two people, even on an audiobook read by one person, "she" or "he" would suffice. Again, I'm not reading it, and in my head it could be completely different, but this lack of personal pronouns is very choppy and distracting to the story. Otherwise, I'm enjoying it. And I'm a grammar snob. Maybe an abridgement would be helpful for the audio version of Ms. Crusie's books.
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