I love reading Crusie novels to remind myself that not every romance novel pre-mid-2000’s is, in retrospect, unreadable trash. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore Loretta Chase, but her 90’s books, as lovely as they are, definitely still need to be read with the context that those books are 30 years old now. The real pain from reading this book almost 30 years later was that Daisy was paying, for a bachelor apartment, $300/month in rent. *cries in rent inflation and wage stagnation*
Plot: Daisy quit her stable teaching career to focus on her painting career, figuring she’d hustle for a while on her savings and then be able to sustain herself on her art. In a path to success still very relatable in 2024, what this meant in practice is not being able to change as an artist because she was still trying to establish herself as something and it’s harder to make it if your art is all over the place, and spending most of her time on side hustles to cover her rent and cat food. Even between her savings and side hustles, she’s 3 months behind on her rent. Fortunately, the literal devil, taking the form of her cartoon Bond villain of a neighbour, desperately needs an attractive fiancé to charm a “traditional” (read: homophobic and sexist) professor on a university’s hiring committee. Shenanigans ensue.
This book is adorable. Yes, Daisy is a bit of a manic pixie dream girl, but I think it’s a lot more fair to describe her as artistic and prone to flights of fancy, but otherwise quite grounded and emotionally intelligent. Her role isn’t to help Linc chill out, it is to find a place where she can set down roots and form a community. Linc wants this to an extent too, but he is a closed off academic who has forgotten how to interact with normal people, while Daisy is interested in everyone and everything, which makes her a perfect foil. Neither change meaningfully through the story. Their arcs are more about accepting who they are and what they care about and what they are willing to do to get and protect those things.
Would I have loved for the garbage person on the committee to like, get eaten by a shark or something? Yes. But it wouldn’t be the Crusie way. He got put in his place, and that’s going to have to be enough.
Content warnings: unconsented to groping by non-protagonist, parental neglect.