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    Bet Me
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    Bet Me
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    Bet Me
    Ebook449 pages6 hours

    Bet Me

    By Jennifer Crusie

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The beloved New York Times bestselling novel, now with an exclusive letter from Jennifer Crusie in celebration of its tenth anniversary

    This is New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Crusie's novel about long shots, risk management, true love, and great shoes. . . .

    Minerva Dobbs knows how to work the odds.
    Calvin Morrisey always plays to win.

    But when they face off, neither one is prepared.
    Because when real life meets true love, all bets are off. . . .

    Minerva Dobbs knows that happily-ever-after is a fairy tale, especially with a man who asked her to dinner to win a bet, even if he is gorgeous and successful Calvin Morrisey. Cal knows commitment is impossible, especially with a woman as cranky as Min Dobbs, even if she does wear great shoes and keep him on his toes. When they say good-bye at the end of their evening, they cut their losses and agree never to see each other again.

    But fate has other plans, and it's not long before Min and Cal meet again. Soon they're dealing with a jealous ex-boyfriend, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a determined psychologist, chaos theory, a freakishly intelligent cat, Chicken Marsala, and more risky propositions than either of them ever dreamed of. Including the biggest gamble of all---true love.
    Bet Me is the winner of a 2005 RITA Award.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781429903349
    Author

    Jennifer Crusie

    Jennifer Crusie was researching her dissertation on the differences in the way men and women tell stories when she got sidetracked into writing romance novels. Her first book was published in 1993 (which pretty much finished off any hope of her getting that PhD) and her twenty-second book, Maybe This Time, came out in August of 2010, all of which she considers a minor miracle, especially since she is also a New York Times, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author and a two-time Rita award winner.

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    Reviews for Bet Me

    4/5

    1,183 ratings73 reviews

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    • 4/5
      cute funny romantic romp ... I easily identified with food temptation ... rather low on sensuality scale
    • 5/5
      Hilarious story of a reluctant romance between two stubborn, witty people. The dialogue is snappy, and while light on physical romance, the foreplay is in the arguments that last 4/5 of the book!
    • 5/5
      For straitlaced actuary Minerva Dobbs finding Prince Charming doesn't seem likely, especially after getting dumped in a bar by her latest boyfriend right before her sister's wedding. When she overhears him betting a barmate ten bucks he can't pick her up and sleep with her before the month's out she decides to play along - a month with a good-looking guy, and a date to her sister's wedding seems like a win-win situation. Little does she know how much things can change in a month.Smart-mouthed and fast thinking, Min with her penchant for funky shoes and statistics may be a typical quirky Crusie heroine, but that doesn't make her boring. Another fun one.
    • 5/5
      This books is up there with Bradley as my fave -- a great read. Take a chance, try it!
    • 5/5
      The heroine is fat and ashamed of it. The hero is entranced by the look of rapture on her face when he finally convinces her to eat. Yes, it's a fantasy -- in fact, it's a fairy tale, a feminist retelling of a someday-my-prince-will-come structure. The sex is hot, the food porn is glorious, and the overall sensuality (from the smell of lavender to the taste of butter) is consistently rewarding. As is often true in Crusie's style, even the villains deserve sympathy and eventual affection, and the community of friends around the hero and heroine forms a witty, snarky, loving family.
    • 4/5
      This book was OK. Not a fan of the way it was written, but the storyline was pretty interesting.
    • 5/5
      Another A+ novel by Crusie! This might be one of my all-time favorites of hers. The main character, Min, is voluptous, smart, and shoe-loving. I adored this book!
    • 5/5
      My first Jennifer Crusie book and this will become a favorite reread chick-lit of mine. You KNOW that boy and girl will get together in the end (so NOT a spoiler), but how they get there is a good story. If you like chick-lit -- or need a touch of romance -- I highly recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book! Enjoyed the chemistry between the hero and heroine. I think it's great that Min isn't a skinny rail, but a real women with real curves. And I love that Cal falls in love with her because of that! Most people didn't like that it wasn't as sexy as her latest novels, but I enjoyed the banter and flirting between these two great characters. There was a lot of great secondary characters also. It's a must read!
    • 4/5
      This was, obviously, a fast read for me, and a lot of fun. Good thing I picked this up for the weekend, or I would've been screwed during the week. It's not an easy book to put down, because you want to know how things are going to end up. The humor was fun, and I liked the real issues the book explored. It's one of those things that not many non-romance readers realize, that romance novels actually deal with a helluva lot of real-world issues: it's not all about how hot the main characters are and how they'll get into bed. For anyone who doesn't read romance, but wouldn't mind checking the genre out, I'd easily recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      So funny, even on the second reading.
    • 4/5
      Jennifer Crusie is a guilty pleasure for me. These are certainly not books you'd give to your mother to read (well, I wouldn't), and I know at least one of my friends who may well never speak to me again (although I hope she will), knowing that I read and enjoy this book. Bet Me is the story of the unwilling romance between Min (christened Minerva), who is a woman with a few extra pounds and a lot of insecurity about that, and Cal, an accidental womanizer who finds Min and her roundness completely enchanting against his will (and also against hers), and who asks her out initially on a bet in a bar. She accepts because she's just been dumped, and she needs a date for her sister's upcoming wedding. What ensues is, to put it plainly, the most readable contemporary romance I think I've ever encountered (not that I encounter a whole lot of contemporary romances, but still). Min, who is an actuary, learns to take risks and to appreciate her body for what it is, and Cal learns that there is a woman he can stay with for the rest of his life. And we all learn that Krispy Kremes and chicken marsala can be very, very sexy.The dialogue in this book just crackles -- Min and Cal spar with a smoldering kind of sexy annoyance that completely draws you into the story. The supporting characters are also believable and likable. The whole novel is excellent -- right up until the last two chapters where a bit of farce creeps in. And then there's an afterword, and I never like afterwords that tell me what happened to everyone, well, after. I like to either read a sequel or use my imagination. I took off half a star for the last two chapters and another half a star because Crusie's sex scenes can sometimes be just that little bit TOO descriptive.
    • 1/5
      A guy walks into a bar. He meets his friends there, one of whom picks an okay-looking girl and bets him $10,000 that he will sleep with her within a month. He instead bets his friend $10 that he will take her out to dinner. Two things are of note here: (1) The friend making the bet just finished breaking up with this girl, and (2) the girl happens to overhear most of it, and is now under the impression that her ex-boyfriend bet a guy $10 that he would sleep with her in a month. The guy accepting the bet, the ever-popular serial dater Cal Morrissey, accepts the bet for dinner and $10 with the girl, Min Dobbs. Min's ex-boyfriend, David, is too drunk to realize that Cal accepted the $10 bet, and not the $10,000 bet. Min decides to go out with Cal in order to spite David. Plot to one of the archived comic relief episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210? Not hardly, and I must sheepishly admit that 90210 was one of my favorites in its heyday. Instead, this is the catalyst event for Jennifer Crusie's book, Bet Me, a novel I picked up with cynical expectations in my exploration of the "chick lit" genre. I have to say that I was not surprised to see that the characters (aside from, to a certain extent, Min and Cal) are generally one-sided and the plot itself was quite predictable (what else would they do but end up in each other's arms, right?). Still, the writing was very funny, and at the least it was an entertaining read if you are able to dismiss these shortcomings. Regarding these cookie cutter characters, it is almost easy enough to put the large majority of them into categories. Min has her girlfriends - one is the popular, svelte one who gets all the guys and is more than a little suspicious of men, and the other is the sweet, soft-spoken one who believes in fairy tales. Cal's friends are similar foils: One is the tough guy who appears to be monomaniacal when it comes to certain pick-up lines, and the other is a sort of shy and simple guy with old-fashioned values. Cal and Min at first present themselves too to fit right in. Cal is the popular hunk with a habit for dumping women, and Min is the angry woman who is upset over her breakup not because David left her, but because he left her without a date for her sister's wedding. A somewhat refreshing twist from this formula is the eventually over-emphasized subplot dealing with Min's weight, which is a subject of constant debate and complaint from her overbearing mother. (Yet another typical character... Heck, even the phrase "overbearing mother" is a cliche, yeah?) It was nice to take a break from the whole I-hate-you, I-love-you plotline to hear about Min's concerns about her weight and the tension it causes with the women of the Dobbs household. Aside from this twist, the subplots in the story act mostly as a way of presenting the rest of this ensemble cast in its typical fashion: Naturally, Cal and Min's friends attempt to hook up accordingly. Naturally, Cal and Min's exes act as interlopers. At times it felt like the subplots were fillers to space out the Cal and Min story, which would have been very typical if it weren't for the supporting actors of chicken marsala and Krispy Kreme donuts. The stars of the subplots were, possibly because of their one-dimensional nature, only somewhat likable, and only at certain moments. To be honest, some of the subplots were annoying, others ridiculous. Still, after all this, I have to say that the book did make me laugh out loud. The stories are set up for some entertaining, and even mildly believable comic moments. Once the main characters gain familiarity with the reader, it is easy to enjoy their expected reactions when faced with certain predicaments. I feel that more could have been done with this... More could have been done with EVERYTHING, but the comic potential is the only aspect that really made it through to near completion. Borrow it from the library if you're in the mood for a laugh on the beach.
    • 3/5
      Great fluffy romance book that isn't stupid. I enjoyed it.
    • 2/5
      It was definitely funny, though that made it feel slightly more unrealistic - everything every character ever said is clever and witty? Stretches my willingness to suspend disbelief. But made me chuckle. I liked the chubby heroine but she had more of a wry humor thing than an insecurity thing going on, so it nixed a lot of the potential angst. Basically, chick lit is not for me. Now I know. (2.5 stars)
    • 4/5
      OK. I had a love/hate relationship with this book (or it started with hate, and moved toward love…). Mostly it bugged. Yes, the female main character is fat. We get it. Yes, the male main character is a good looking beast we get it. Every time they met, there was food, and he would literally shove it in her face. (not cool.) And not in a romantic way, in a forceful way. But. I kept putting it down, and reading something else, but I always came back. It has a quality that wanted to keep me reading. And you know what? Once I got into it, it was pretty good. Enjoyable even. Something about Min’s life, and the way she looked at things, was amusing and relatable. I love the scene when she is doodling on a folder while talking on the phone, and in the end realizes she has stabbed it to death. When Cal started to become a character, rather then a stereotype, you couldn’t help liking him either, and cheering for the two of them to get together, fate or no fate. And I have to say, some of the coincidences were hilarious! Like the movie theater? Heh. Liza made me laugh out loud more then once, when she would show up out of nowhere and whack Cal in the back of the head with her purse when he and Min were kissing. And I like that it was a romance that talked about it being ok, not to want kids. It was refreshing. There was no ‘we will get married and live happily-ever-after and have a million kids and a perfect life’. Sometimes romances can be overly ‘sweet’. I am all for the happy ending, but happy doesn’t have to equal perfect in another stereotyped way. And last but not least, I am going to end this review on a pet peeve. A HOT DOG IS NOT A SANDWICH! No matter how many times you say it. Amen?!Overall, it’s romantic, funny, and I think a wide variety of people (probably women more-so) will enjoy this one. =D
    • 5/5
      Yes, this book is pink. (Okay, yours might be blue. But mine is pink.) Yes, it has shoes on the cover. Pink and shoes. You know it and I know it. This means chick lit. But this is the apogee of chick lit. This is chick lit for people who do not read chick lit. This is a great, multi-layered, character-driven story packed with humour and style that just happens to be centred around a boy-meets-girl story and to mention, on occasion, shoes. Min Dobbs is 33, fairly sensible, a conservative dresser, risk averse but mostly comfortable in her own skin. Being sensible, she knows she'll never be skinny, but she also knows her appearance will never break mirrors, and once her sister's wedding is over and her mother gets off her back about being able to fit into her bridesmaid dress she'll be going back to eating butter and doughnuts with a (nearly) clear conscience. She has wit, intelligence, a good (if slightly dull) job and and very good friends. She is, moreover, a nice person. She also has a horrible ex, David. What Min really hates about David is not the fact that he dumped her because she wouldn't sleep with him (although she's not precisely pleased about that), but the fact he did it three weeks before her sister's wedding: now, her mother is nagging her about being dateless as well as being too big for the bridesmaid dress. David was a toad, but he was a toad that was keeping her mother happy. Even toads have some redeeming features.In a fit of drunken amphibian pique, David bets his business acquaintance Cal a serious chunk of money that Cal cannot seduce Min within a month. Cal tries very hard to tactfully decline the bet, being willing only to bet a pittance on being able to take Min to dinner. He's so tactful, though, that his friends don't notice he's declined the bet. Cal also has a horrible ex. No, that's possibly unfair. Cal has a deluded ex, who thinks he's still in love with her. Like Min, Cal has wit, intelligence, a good job and very good friends. He is also a nice person. Yes, he takes Min to dinner on a bet, but he soon sees past her boring suit. Cal likes Min. A lot. Min also likes Cal. But Min doesn't want to like Cal, because she overheard David making the bet and she doesn't realise Cal refused to join in. And this is where things start to get complicated, because Min refuses to take the situation lying down (pun totally intended).And so Min and Cal's story unfolds, interwoven with several excellent and well-developed plots involving the families, friends and exes of Cal and Min, plus an insane cat named Elvis. Altogether excellent. Intelligent and fun. And ignore the pink and the shoes: just because this isn't serious and depressing literary fiction doesn't mean it's superficial, inane or irredeemably girly.
    • 4/5
      Minerva Dobbs has just been ditched by her boyfriend. She finds herself part of a bet, a bet she has problems letting go because she fancies the guy involved. Calvin Morrisey is hot, but he really doesn't want commitment. As he slowly discovers that he likes her, she keeps trying to resist. It's lighthearted fun and Crusie really does have a deft touch with her comedy and her romance. I enjoyed the main characters and some of the secondary characters are great fun as well.
    • 4/5
      Not one of my favs of hers, but still packed with humor.
    • 5/5
      Honestly, I found this book to be quite enjoyable. Again, my initial complaint wasn't with Crusie's writing style or her voice, but with plot development (or the lack there of). In Bet Me, she has, oh almost 200 more pages to work with, so needless to say the plot and love story are much more well-developed.Our heroine is 33-year-old Minerva Dobbs--aka Min--a chubby, sweet, intelligent actuary who dresses a little dowdy but who has interesting taste in shoes. The hero? Tall, dark and handsome Calvin Morrisey who has a habit of making women love him--and then leaving them.When Min's boyfriend breaks up with her three weeks before her sister's wedding, she's understandably a little ticked off. Okay, she's more than just a little ticked off, considering the main reason he broke up with her was because she wouldn't put out. The icing on the cake, however, is an overheard wager between her ex (David) and the hunky, risk-taking Cal--$10,000 that Cal can't get Min in bed within a month. When Cal approaches Min and asks her to dinner, she accepts, all with the purpose of stringing him along and making him lose the bet. Unfortunately, though, a little voice inside her head keeps whispering, "this one," and he keeps kissing her and feeding her Krispy Kreme donuts and brings her a cat and introduces her to a great Italian restaurant named Emilios and keeps kissing her... You get the point. She's hooked, even though she doesn't want to be.Cal has no interest in winning the bet, considering he never agreed to it the first place. But something about Min intrigues him. Maybe it's her voluptuous body. Maybe it's her wit and intelligence. Maybe it's her shoes. Or maybe it's the look she gets on her face every time he puts a piece of chocolate-glazed donut in her mouth. Something about Min attracts him, and he can't stay away. Granted, it doesn't help that his brain keeps whispering, "this one" to him while he's kissing her, either.Bet Me is a classic tale of opposites attracting, only to find that they have more in common than they realize. The story itself is well-written, funny (in fact, downright hilarious at times), smart and extremely enjoyable. I read the first 3/4 of it within a few hours, which is definitely saying something considering how little time I have to devote to reading these days (plus, it's a testament to just how fast Crusie's writing reads). The romance progressed nicely between Min and Cal, and I thought that framing it against Cal's ex-girlfriend's relationship theories was a fantastic idea. In fact, I even found myself slightly sympathetic to Cal's psychologist, theory-laden girlfriend Cynthie--while she came across as a bit of a man-eater, she really did love Cal and simply had her priorities a little screwed up. David, however, needed to be kicked in the knee.The book is also full of a great cast of secondary characters, with their own romances to complement Min and Cal's, not to mention adding depth to both main characters. Reading their stories made me feel like these people could be my friends, too (hell, they reminded me of a lot of my friends, to be honest), and I was rooting for them all the way.Despite being a romantic comedy, Crusie does present some more serious issues that the characters have to deal with. First, obviously, is Min's weight. While Crusie never comes out and says just how big Min is, I somehow got the impression that she was around a size 14, maybe 12, which is right there on the borderline between straight sizes and plus sizes. Cal thinks Min is beautiful just the way she is, but Min has a different opinion, largely thanks to her mother who's obsessed with staying thin and avoiding carbs. Her mother comes across as being pretty verbally and emotionally abusive at times, and it's really no wonder that Min (and even her sister Diana, to an extent) has body image issues.Cal has his own set of serious issues to deal with. He's dealt with dyslexia his entire life, and as a result was constantly berated by his father and his peers and called "stupid." When he declined his father's invitation to join the family firm and instead started his own business with his two best friends, that only helped to stir up more resentment between father and son. Throw in a chilly mother and a brother who's following in their father's footsteps, and Cal has his own self esteem issues to deal with.Granted, Crusie doesn't dive completely to the depths of these things, but she definitely does more than skim the surface. I love it when a romantic comedy does something like this--gives a character a serious issue, makes them deal with it, but does so in a way that isn't preachy or After School Special-ish. As a result, Min and Cal were very well-rounded characters who both grew and became better than they were at the beginning of the book.There were only two things that remotely bothered me, but they were so small that they didn't take away from my enjoyment of it as a whole. The first is a nitpicky thing, but I found it hard to believe that Cal noticed Min's shoes as much as he did. Sure, she wore some odd shoes, but most straight men I know could care less about women's shoes unless they're coming off the woman along with the rest of her clothes. I also wish Crusie would have continued the recurring bets that she started with in the beginning. Min and Cal kept betting each other ten bucks on different things. Min kept winning. But somewhere about a third of the way through, the bet thing got dropped. I really would have liked to have seen Crusie continue that thread, as it was fun but also illustrated perfectly their different personality traits.Overall, the book read very fast and was quite enjoyable to read. I laughed out loud on several occasions, and loved the fact that it was so unabashadly fairy-tale romantic. And of course, we all know I loved reading about a not-skinny heroine.I would definitely recommend this book, and I have a feeling I'll end up picking up at least one or two more of Crusie's books to read in the future (anyone have any suggestions?).
    • 2/5
      Eh, I didn't like it as much as Welcome to Temptation. It wasn't very memorable except for the fact that there was a freaky over-fetishization of food. I didn't find it all that entertaining, and if it wasn't for the very long car ride I was on, I might not even have bothered to finish it. I'll pick up another Crusie, but this one just didn't do anything for me.
    • 5/5
      Funny, touching. Refreshing to read a romance where the heroine did not end up with three kids at the end (and did not want them). I reread this one about once a year.
    • 3/5
      It was fun and funny and ended they way you think it will end.
    • 4/5
      This book was lots of fun. I wouldn't call it a great piece of literature, but is a cute story that I could read again. It does contain a few romance novel cliches but that's what I was expecting. The characters are easy to relate to and to like or dislike. And the sexual tension was frustrating yet enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      I'm in a chick-lit sort of mood so this seemed the perfect time to re-read some Jennifer Crusie and review some books from my pre-online days. Bet Me probably wouldn't make my top 5 Crusie list, but it's still an entertaining, snarky, fast-paced read with great characters, loads of sexual tension and some steamy but not overly-graphic sex scenes. As the title gives away, a bet is the significant plot point of this book. The MC, Minerva, is the curvy daughter of a stick-straight, insecure, diet-obsessed woman who is always telling her she's fat. I don't know if she's actually fat or not; the author never talks about measurements, weight or clothing sizes. From Calvin's descriptions though, it seems to me she's not actually fat, just voluptuously proportioned. Either way, it has a significant affect on Min's view of her own self-worth. The level of snark and sarcasm keeps things from feeling too angsty or melodramatic. Min's dumped by her angry boyfriend because she won't put out, and for reasons that are never explained, he really dislikes Calvin, who is gorgeous and gets whatever and whomever he sets his sights on, so that same night he tries to bet Calvin that Calvin can't get Min into bed in one month's time. Min overhears the bet, and well, Crusie isn't re-inventing the romance here, so the reader can expect to see what's coming. But she makes it fun to read about all the same.
    • 4/5
      Fun. It's a "sex in the city" storyline with an insecure woman meeting a very handsome man who also has some secret insecurities. Some guys make a bet at a bar that the handsome guy can't get the uptight girl into bed in a month. She overhears the bet and decides to play a game of her own.
    • 5/5
      Another favourite from Crusie. The characters were wonderful and the storyline moved along quicky. I kept wanting to read about Min and Cal even after I finished the book.
    • 5/5
      Min is the Crusie heroine I identify most with. I like how she and Cal complement each other and especially enjoyed the parts where they stand up to each other's parents. I also just really like the way Crusie lets her characters be themselves in this one.
    • 4/5
      A quick read. This should be a screenplay due to the great wit and sarcasm.
    • 4/5
      Recommended by a friend when looking for a light read.

      Absolutely loved it. Cute and light, yet with enough tension and fleshed out characters. The statistics and fairy tale themes worked well together too