Jennifer Crusie's Welcome
to Temptation is a novel about the children of a con man coming to
visit a small town in Ohio to make a movie at the behest of the town's
success story --- the high school ingénue who went off to Hollywood. The
hereditary mayor-for-life, his mom, his political rival, the other loony city
council members, the police chief, the ingénue's self-important news anchor
husband, the mayor's daughter, a boy dog named Lassie, and a freezer full of
Dove bars round out the cast. Witty dialog, good sex, a pool table, and a tone
reminiscent of Westlake's Dancing Aztecs make it worth a bit of a slog
through the early pages that set up the action. But then they start to make the
porn movie under the eyes of the burghers and it gets really amusing. The real attraction,
though, is Crusie’s ability to actually capture human interaction, and show
those flashes of insight when one character understands another. While this isn't as good as Bet Me, it's still an excellent story. And in a world where romance novels have been supplanted by "mommy porn," three-dimensional characters are a real pleasure.
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