Great fun, chick lit with heart ( )

Great fun, chick lit with heart ( )

Great fun, chick lit with heart ( )

I was really enjoying this book. It flows really easily, Lucy and Max were both really fun characters, I understood the attraction, the plot wasn't exactly probable but it made enough sense.

Eventually, however, Lucy stopped being a fun, smart, free-spirit and started being a misguided child.

Lucy is this real goody-two-shoes and she is always yammering about how what matters are good intentions. Her moral code is not much more complex. When Max tells her - in his first big vulnerable emotional moment - about how his parents neglected him consistently despite their "good intentions" Lucy tells him that his parents couldn't be that bad if they meant well, and insists on it despite the fact that she's hurting Max a great deal.

She is also the manager of this used clothing store, Successfully Dressed. For a while it had a really substantial area with high-ticket vintage designer clothing. Lucy thinks that having this clothing in the shop is intimidating or discriminatory against the less affluent customers, who come in looking for interview clothes. They're the real purpose of the store, who it's supposed to benefit, so she doesn't want to do anything that would make them uncomfortable.

But the store is on the verge of going out of business because it's making so little money. They sell these intervew clothes at a deep discount, and they don't have enough customers. Lucy's worried about having to close the place down. And yet, she refuses to let one of the other employees solicit these big-ticket donations, and when some come in she actually hides them in her desk drawer. So while she's wandering around weeping about people being out of a job when the store closes, she's actively preventing the place from making money. I wanted to slap her.

She also gets really, really angry at Max for running seminars on how to budget, how to do interviews, all sorts of useful things for people on the job market and coincidentally bringing in a ton of customers - because he's "trying to take over the store" - and she's so offended that she bursts into tears and runs away. Her brilliant ideas, which she feels have been crushed, include inviting an astrologer and baking brownies.

I could go on but I will stop. At some point, I was so angry at Lucy that I stopped enjoying the novel. And the end is just one long fight. I don't need to find out that the hero is a competent groveler in order to believe in the happily ever after. In fact, that pretty much guaranteed that I didn't believe in the happily ever after. ( )

Max has always been about working hard and playing hard. Unfortunately the working hard part has just lost him his fun loving girlfriend along with all of his suits she has decided to relieve him of. Lucy is a heart of gold, best intensions type of gal determined to make a go of the vintage clothing store she is managing. Finding a truck load of men's designer suits in the donation box really made her day and the underwear clad owner asking her to return them was the cherry on top of her find. When Lucy insists that Max volunteer at her shop to get his suits back neither one of them count on the fact that opposites attract.

Mad About Max is a cute lighthearted romance which does justice to the familiar tale of the poor but generous woman and the rich, driven man she changes just enough for them to fall madly in love. There are some definite giggle worthy parts in this story, especially in the beginning, which make it a very enjoyable read. I even liked the sub-story about Max and Lucy's respective best friends and their own foray into the world of romance. If you have a weakness for sweet contemporary romances I would highly recommend this one. ( )