Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Review: Don't Look Down


Don't Look Down by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
3 1/2 stars

Summary: When Lucy Armstrong, an ad director (dog food commercials, mostly) gets a call asking her to finish directing a movie down in Savannah, she figures it'll be easy money and a chance to see her sister, Daisy (a script supervisor) and niece Pepper. When she arrives, she discovers that the cast and crew are lackluster (or have already left), her sister's a mess, and the stunt coordinator is her ex-husband, Connor Nash. When Bryce, the star (a comedian who's decided he's now an action star) hires Special Forces Captain JT Wilder to be his military consultant and stunt double, Lucy is both attracted to and frustrated by him and Nash is angry at having another alpha-male around. But JT comes in handy when "accidents" start happening during stunts, particularly the ones in the swamp inhabited by a one-eyed alligator.

Why'd I pick it up? I noticed Jennifer Crusie's name on the cover and thought "How did I not know about this one?" Plus I was going on vacation and needed another paperback to take with me.

Favourite stuff: 5-year-old Pepper. Smarter than a lot of the adults around her and totally into Wonder Woman. The way she had everyone on the set wrapped around her finger (especially strong, silent JT) was sweet and her delight over wearing altered "WonderWear" lingerie was a hoot. Also, I had fun discussing the military and weapon parts with my husband, particularly Bryce's attempts to be like Rambo.

Overall thoughts: At first the combination of these two authors was really jarring. Mayer writes thrillers and is a former Green Beret and my fave Crusie writes romantic mysteries. So there would be a lot of talk about weapons and military stuff and I'd wonder where Jennifer was and then...oh, steamy love scene, there we go! But once I got used to it, it was a real page-turner.

4 comments:

Moviegirl20 said...

Not actually commenting on this post at all...
I don't like the plot of cabaret either, but the music is great. Its one of those movies that I put on when I'm cleaning and stop for the songs. Kind of like Thoroughly Modern Millie.
We weren't allowed to listen to non-Christian music when I was growing up, so we got around that by watching musicals. So I grew up watching Rogers and Hammerstein, Disney and any other PG or G rated musicals we could find. :-}

The Bookworm said...

this books sounds pretty good...I havent read Jennifer Crusie, I'll have to check her books out sometime :o)

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Naida - I highly recommend Jennifer Crusie!! I think my fave of hers is Welcome to Temptation.

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Movie Girl - I love the music of Cabaret, too. I love singing along with the MC and Sally. :) And I dolike the plot when it's onstage -well, it's pretty tragic, of course, but when it's well done it's really good.

And you were able to find lots of good music that way. Mine was because my parents were older and I was pretty clueless about pop culture. My husband is still shocked at all of the 80's movies I haven't seen - "Were you raised in a CAVE??"