Amazon.com Review
Setting: Columbus, Ohio
Sensuality: 7
Mural artist Tilda Goodnight is struggling to pay off the mortgage on the family business and keep the Goodnight secrets safely hidden. Juggling her life gets even more complicated when she hides in Clea Lewis's closet and collides with sexy Davy Dempsey. Tilda is in Clea's bedroom to steal back a forged painting; Davy's there to steal Clea's account codes and retrieve the $3 million the larcenous blonde stole from him. Somehow, Tilda finds herself exchanging a mind-blowing kiss with her fellow burglar, and when Davy follows her home and rents a room from her mother, she's forced to deal with the charming con man. Everyone in Tilda's world is pretending to be someone else, including her daydreaming mother, her split-personality sister, and her cross-dressing ex-brother-in-law. All of them, including Tilda and Davy, are Faking It. What will happen when all the secrets are out and everyone knows the truth about everyone else? Will Davy recover his 3 million? Will Tilda recover all the forged paintings and find her true artistic calling? Will Tilda's mother run off to Aruba with a hit man named Ford? And exactly what is the difference between a man labeled a "doughnut" and one who deserves the title "muffin"?
Faking It is a hilarious, warm novel with a cast of quirky and wonderful characters that endear while they charm. Readers who met the Dempsey siblings in Crusie's Welcome To Temptation will be delighted to revisit the family and discover what happens to Davy Dempsey when he meets his romantic nemesis, Tilda Goodnight. --Lois Faye Dyer
From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Crusie (Fast Women, etc.) takes readers on another smooth ride in her latest romantic caper. At the wheel this time is fab art forger Matilda Goodnight, whose chance encounter in a closet with cute con man/thief Davy Dempsey leads to madcap mayhem and breathless romance. He's trying to steal back the money he filched from Clea Lewis, ex-girlfriend (and possible husband killer), who had taken it right back. Tilda just wants her last "Scarlet" painting, which Clea has bought to impress Mason Phipps, her rich art-obsessed beau. It's the last of six forgeries Tilda did for Tony, her now deceased gallery-owner dad, and Tilda is determined to preserve her newly squeaky-clean reputation. Confused yet? It gets wackier, because the whole Goodnight clan and supporting cast are as enormously engaging as the loopy plot. There's Tilda's mother, Gwen; her sister, Eve/Louise, a split-personality teacher/diva; her gay ex-brother-in-law, Andrew; and her precocious teenage niece, Nadine. Add a host of shady characters and would-be hitmen, and the breezy plot thickens and puffs up like the light airy doughnuts all Goodnight women are attracted to but eventually forsake for muffins: "Muffins are for the long haul and they always taste good. They don't have that oh-my-God-I-have-to-have-that thing that the doughnuts have going for them, but you still want them the next morning." Finally, defying all odds, Crusie answers the burning questions she poses can liars and thieves fall in love, live happily ever after and stay out of jail? while confirming the dangers of dating doughnuts.
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