Manhunting, Jennifer Crusie

Man­hunt­ing (1993) by Jen­nifer Crusie, 288 pages, list price: $6.99 (B&N). That cover is of a reprint. I have in my hands the orig­i­nal, Har­le­quin Temp­ta­tion #463 from Sep­tem­ber 1993. Just what is up with boxer shorts on the cover,huh?

Crusie’s con­tem­po­rary romances are quite good. I say that only because I’ve had suc­cess with quite a few of them (Wel­come To Temp­ta­tion, Any­one But You, Trust Me On This, The Cin­derella Deal and yes even Crazy For You & Fast Women). I haven’t read her col­lab­o­ra­tive stuff and don’t know if I ever will. This is what she needs to get back to, this!

I enjoyed read­ing Man­hunt­ing. The expe­ri­ence reminded me why I always rushed out and bought her hard­cov­ers. As usual, Crusie tack­les the issues of mod­ern day women who have careers who are still left feel­ing unful­filled with humor and sin­cer­ity. Thirty-five year old Kate Sven­son has a great career going for her in a top man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm but lately she’s been feel­ing mis­er­able and lonely. In the space of three years she’s been engaged to three dif­fer­ent men who were all wrong for her.

Her best friend, Jesse Rogers, a cake dec­o­ra­tor, sin­gle as well, tells Kate to devise a plan for her search for Mr. Right since busi­ness plans are what she loves doing. Kate makes out her plan and comes up with what she thinks she wants in a man. You know, stuff like being tall, dis­tin­guished, hand­some, suc­cess­ful and rich. She’s so dis­il­lu­sioned mid­way into the story that she set­tles for human. I can feel her on that last one.

But any­way, Kate decides to imple­ment her plan by tak­ing a two week vaca­tion at a golf resort in the small town of Toby Cor­ners. She vows to unwind and relax and find her Mr. Right. When she gets there, she’s dressed in a busi­ness suit (oh no she didn’t!), hair in a stiff bun and is look­ing less than unwound.

Then there’s Jake Tem­ple­ton, an ex-tax attor­ney who left the city behind to come back to the coun­try and lay around. City life was never his style and his ex-wife, Tiffany, had more ambi­tion that he did so she left him. Jake’s a laid back kind of guy. Since quit­ting his suc­cess­ful job, he grew a mus­tache and decided to invest his money into his brother’s cabins/golf resort as a silent part­ner. For five years he’s been sit­ting on his ass and his fam­ily is tired of it. They try to get him involved in life again but so far no luck.

Most of Jake’s morn­ings are spent out on his boat sleep­ing the day away or chap­er­on­ing at social events and par­ties. He’s the go to per­son when some­one gets a bit rowdy. Kate meets him when some­one at a luau gets a bit too friendly with her and Jake is there to give her a hand. But she shows him that she is more than capa­ble of sav­ing her­self. Nev­er­the­less, he keeps an eye on her anyway.

Now, Crusie is good at show­ing rather than telling how two peo­ple meet, become friends and then fall in love. She’s really good at this. The best. This is one of her bet­ter cat­e­gory romances (and no I haven’t READ THEM ALL). The romance took place in a short period of time (think it’s two weeks) but damn if I didn’t believe or feel that these two peo­ple hadn’t known each other longer. It felt so real and nat­ural and the chem­istry flow­ing between them was electric.

There’s a vil­lain­ess (always is) and in this case, it hap­pens to be, Valerie, an ambi­tious, snob­bish woman who is try­ing to manip­u­late Jake’s brother, Will, into mar­ry­ing her among other things. Fun­nily enough, she views Kate as her role model and Kate is appalled (!). But then Will is not above reproach. He let Valerie build up expec­ta­tions about their rela­tion­ship that he didn’t have plans to meet and he gets called on it (good deal).

Over­all premise is that Kate comes to this small town in Ken­tucky to find her Mr. Right but she spends most of her time with Jake, who she says is Mr. Wrong. The humor (as always it’s funny) lies with the losers that Kate keeps dat­ing. Her plan for find­ing the right man proves to be stu­pid (hey, her words). Sure they’re all dis­tin­guished and rich and suc­cess­ful (if it’s true) but some were out­right awful. The run­ning joke around town and with Jake is that almost all the men she dates ended up injured in some way (very funny as well).

But hey, once the romance got going, it was pretty hot and steamy. Sex­ual ten­sion built as the pro­tag­o­nists spent more and more time together. The whole town, like the read­ers, see that these two peo­ple belong together only they don’t know it. But when they real­ize it, they make up for lost time.

Now, as for the con­clu­sion, what could pos­si­bly be the con­flict to keep our lovers apart? Kat’s bad luck with men? No. Kate’s career back home? Sure. Jake’s aver­sion to mar­riage and always assum­ing that every career woman is like his ex-wife? Yes. Fail­ure to con­front the future? Bingo.

The end­ing is, yes I’m gonna say it, ide­al­is­ti­cally sappy but I was grin­ning any­way. I enjoyed the dia­logue in here as well as the prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters. I enjoyed the side sto­ries that included the towns peo­ple, the friend­ships, the cama­raderie and the homey feel of a close community.

If I had to cite crit­i­cisms, it was that darn repet­i­tive “he’s not right for me” and “she not my type” song. But then the tune changed as they spent more time together. And another thing that I’ve noticed with the last two cat­e­gories I’ve read by Crusie is the women always hav­ing to make the move to another city or give up their career and ambi­tions for love and fam­ily. For once I’d like to see the hero do the same but I’d be hold­ing my breath for­ever before that happens.

Crusie is really good at writ­ing about rela­tion­ships between women. I love that about her books. Mov­ing for­ward, Man­hunt­ing was good over­all. I enjoyed it for what it was and hope­fully there are more cat­e­gory sto­ries by her to dis­cover (like what else is really good in her back­list?). My grade, B+. This was a good romance. No were­wolves. No shifters. No sus­pense. Just a plain olé reg­u­lar con­tem­po­rary romance novel.

This review is apart of the 2010 TBR Chal­lenge! Please visit the other par­tic­i­pants. This book is also still avail­able in print and ebook where print and ebooks are sold.

For Fur­ther Reading

• “When Love Isn’t Enough” by Kath­leen Gilles Seidel
• Ain’t Mis­be­hav­ing, Jeanne Grant
• The Plague, Joanne Dahme
• The Girl With the Dragon Tat­too, Stieg Lars­son [Mil­len­nium Trilogy]
• Mis­sion Flats, William Lan­day {Guest Review}
• 2010 Reis­sues From Author, Jen­nifer Crusie
• Lead Me On, Vic­to­ria Dahl
• Manga Mon­day: ES (Eter­nal Sab­bath), Fuyumi Soryo
• Wednesday’s Child, Gayle Wil­son [Guest Review]
• A Can­dle for Nick, Lorna Michaels [Guest Review]

Tagged as: 2010 Reads, B+ Reviews, career driven women, category romance, Jennifer Crusie, reprint, searching for Mr. Right, TBR2010