Abducted by The Cinderella Deal

I have lost track of the number of Crusie novels I have listened to this year, but here is my review for the latest: The Cinderella Deal!

THE HEADLINE:

In order to land the ideal job, a man pays a woman to pretend to be his wife for one year.

THE ABDUCTOR:

The man in this relationship is Linc (short for Lincoln) Blaise who is a bit of a snobby self centered tight ass who takes a while to warm up to. The woman is Daisy Flattery who is a wild and crazy free spirited artist who warmed up to Linc much faster then I did.

TIME IN CAPTIVITY:

Jennifer Crusie is one of my favorite authors that I only just found. I have been devouring her books for months now. She is a little bit of a "formula" author, but for her it totally works to her advantage. Anytime I pick up a Crusie novel I can be sure of 3 things...

1. When the initial plot is introduced to me I will probably roll my eyes at how ludicrous it all is.

2. There will be a girl and a guy who will naturally assume that they don't belong together for whatever reason, but as the story moves along they will develop crazy chemistry.

3. By the time it is all over there will be a sex scene that is chaste enough to make this reader not feel like she has to go to confession afterward, but hot and steamy enough that it makes the whole book worth it!!!

And it was no different with The Cinderella Deal.

The original plot of Linc needing Daisy to pretend to be his wife so that he could get a teaching job was...for lack of a better word...ridiculous. I've seen this kind of idea used in the sense that a corporations likes to hire people who are settled down because they appear more stable and all that b.s. But in the Cinderella Deal the head of the university that Linc is applying to, likes to hire married men so that he can hit on their wives! A fact which Linc knows and yet when Daisy tells Linc later that his boss has been hitting her, he acts all shocked and surprised.

My only other complaint was that it did feel to me that Daisy warmed up to Linc too quickly. In the beginning of the novel she hates him after she sees him kick a cat. But because he is attractive and has a nice body (a fact she mentions repeatedly) her issues with him quickly go out the window. But eventually I was able to see the softer side of Linc too, and then I really started rooting for the couple.

In the end, in order for Linc to keep his job at the university they have to convince the small campus town that they really are in love. Daisy goes to extreme lengths to tame her wild ways and Linc does what he can to be less critical of her. Ultimately, the story is really about how much are we willing or should we be willing to change about ourselves to make a relationship work, any relationship. And where do you draw the line between compromising with someone and flat out sacrificing for them.

THE POINT OF ABDUCTION:

My point of abduction for actually liking the character of Linc came when Daisy adopted a dog she found on the streets that had been hit by a car and named him Jupiter. At first Linc is indifferent towards Jupiter, but later Daisy spies him giving Jupiter a dog biscuit that he had brought home for Jupiter himself and I thought that was very sweet, as did Daisy. 

As for the novel as a whole, since I was listening to the audio version I can't tell you what page I was on, but I can tell you it was around 2 hours and 40 minutes into the book.

Linc and Daisy share a house but they do sleep in separate bedrooms. That is until Linc's mother comes to stay with them. With all that chemistry finally flying between the two of them and then they have to get in bed together...I was hooked! I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen!

ABDUCTION RATING:

The Crusie novel I listened to a couple of weeks before this one was a massive let down in my opinion, but the Cinderella Deal was such a delicious hit that I immediately downloaded another one of her novels titled What the Lady Wants and I'm already lovinging it.

The Cinderella Deal gets an abduction rating of...