Jennifer Crusie is a New York Times best-selling romance author. She started in category romance before moving on to single title romances like Faking It and Bet Me.
In the last several years she's also co-written several books with Bob Mayer (Agnes and the Hitman) and Anne Stuart (The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, also with Eileen Dreyer, and Dogs and Goddesses, also with Lani Diane Stuart), and has published several essays on pop culture.
Works by Jennifer Crusie with their own pages include:
Other works by Jennifer Crusie provide examples of:
- The Baby Trap:
- In Welcome to Temptation, this happens twice. The main male character (many years before the book starts) marries his girlfriend at the time who becomes pregnant after lying to him about using birth control. A minor main character also marries a girlfriend who claims she's pregnant (also many years earlier), despite being in love with someone else. As the book puts it, "Eleven months later, sure enough, she had a baby."
- In What the Lady Wants, Armand first gets June pregnant, then when that child dies he brings home his orphaned niece so she wouldn't leave. Then there's Stormy, who poked holes in the condoms so Armand would marry her, not knowing he had a secret vasectomy years before.
- The Bet: Subverted in Bet Me; Cal doesn't make the bet everyone spends the story believing he did.
- Beta Couple: It's a smooth and quick hook-up for Roger and Bonnie in Bet Me, compared to the more rocky relationship of their respective friends Cal and Min.
- Bluebird of Happiness: In Maybe This Time, Andie's brother-in-law had given her hoop earrings with bluebirds — bluebirds of happiness, he had told her.
- Bodyguard Crush
- Commonality Connection: In Maybe This Time, when Southie meets Alice and asks her what's new, Alice says she likes nuts now. Southie, eager to bond, assures her he does, too.
- The Con: Used in a number of stories.
- Dream Spying: In Maybe This Time, Flo claims that her dreaming of Andie's falling into a well shows that Andie is repressing something in her unconscious.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: Bet Me and The Cinderella Deal.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Used as a Running Gag in Agnes and the HitmanAgnes worked in the Kitchen of Death.Shane: You hit him with a frying pan. How come you didn't grab a knife?Agnes, eyes sliding away: The frying pan was closer. It's not like I had time to pick a weapon. It's not like the frying pan is my weapon of choice.
- Go into the Light: In Maybe This Time, Andie urges ghosts to do this, assuring them that Light Is Good.
- Happily Ever After
- Haunted Fetter: In Maybe This Time, discovering where the fetters are is crucial to disposing of ghosts.
- Hitman with a Heart: Agnes and the Hitman has a couple.
- Shane Fortunato leaves work at a critical time when his uncle Joey, who he hasn't heard from in a while, calls him home to look after grumpy cook Agnes, who has people gunning for her because she is likely sitting on a five million dollar fortune; he then proceeds to fall in love with her over breakfast, pick up fondant for her, and get her a bridge, all in between taking out the odd assassin who shows up in the middle of the night, beating the crap out of dead-beat mobsters, carrying out an official mission, and solving and avenging his parents' murder.
- Carpenter is an ordained priest who takes his girlfriend out to the movies when she's feeling down, and also officiates said girlfriend's daughter's wedding when the original priest turns out to be a putz.
- Light Is Good: In Maybe This Time, Andie urges ghosts to Go into the Light, assuring them that it's probably good, because light is.
- Pair the Spares: Nicely averted in Bet Me. Despite the main couple and many of the side characters hooking up, Liza remains with temporary boyfriends by the end of the book.
- Polyamory: In Crazy For You, the female protagonist's mother is involved with a best friend as well as a husband.
- Pounds Are Animal Prisons: Anyone But You begins with the protagonist, Nina, going to the pound to adopt a dog and ending up rescuing Fred, who was on his last day before euthanization. The pound is not depicted as a horrible place, but it's not very cheerful either — particularly not for aging, depressed Fred.
- Pretty Butterflies: In Maybe This Time, Alice's nightmares are all the more horrific because they include horrible butterflies — which she loves, awake.
- Private Detective: Deconstructed in What the Lady Wants.
- Romance Arc
- Romantic Comedy: Her works are an excellent example of this subgenre.
- Strictly Formula: Almost all of her works involve a crazy ex, a food that the heroine is introduced to by the male lead and ends up craving, a mangy, lovable pet, and a collection (such a stamps, snow globes, etc).
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Zane in Welcome to Temptation was essentially trying to blackmail and/or harass almost every prominent person in town, and annoyed the hell out of pretty much everyone else. Amusingly enough, despite his having been hit by a car, maced in the face, bundled up in a shower curtain and disposed of, he died of a heart condition without actually having been murdered at all.
