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    Maybe This Time
    Maybe This Time
    Maybe This Time
    Audiobook10 hours

    Maybe This Time

    Written by Jennifer Crusie

    Narrated by Angela Dawe

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Andie Miller is ready to move on with her life. She wants to marry her fiancé and leave behind everything in her past, especially her ex-husband, North Archer. But when Andie tries to gain closure with him, he asks one final favor of her. A distant cousin has died and left North the guardian of two orphans who have driven away three nannies already, and things are getting worse. He needs someone to take care of the situation, and he knows Andie can handle anything....

    When Andie meets the two children, she realizes the situation is much worse than she feared. Carter and Alice aren’t your average delinquents, and the creepy old house where they live is being run by the worst housekeeper since Mrs. Danvers. Complicating matters is Andie’s fiancé’s suspicion that this is all a plan by North to get Andie back. He may be right because Andie’s dreams have been haunted by North since she arrived at the old house. And that’s not the only haunting....

    Then her ex-brother-in-law arrives with a duplicitous journalist and a self-doubting parapsychologist, closely followed by an annoyed medium, Andie’s tarot card–reading mother, her avenging ex-mother-in-law, and her jealous fiancé. Just when Andie’s sure things couldn’t get more complicated, North arrives to make her wonder if maybe this time things could just turn out differently....

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 31, 2010
    ISBN9781597108614
    Maybe This Time
    Author

    Jennifer Crusie

    Jennifer Crusie was researching her dissertation on the differences in the way men and women tell stories when she got sidetracked into writing romance novels. Her first book was published in 1993 (which pretty much finished off any hope of her getting that PhD) and her twenty-second book, Maybe This Time, came out in August of 2010, all of which she considers a minor miracle, especially since she is also a New York Times, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author and a two-time Rita award winner.

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    Reviews for Maybe This Time

    4/5

    484 ratings72 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Craziest book I ever read, and not one I'd recommend to people who share my tastes in reading, but this author really knows how to write a page-turner.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent narrator, funny and interesting book, 3 re read for me
    • 3/5
      Not the usual book I’m used to from this author. It’s less a romance than a ghost story, with a romance incorporated. The romance doesn’t even really kickoff until halfway, and I found myself more interested in the ghosts. Still, this was an entertaining, pleasant read. I enjoyed it, liked the characters, and I’m happy to have spent time with it, although it wasn’t as much fun as some of her earlier books.
    • 4/5
      It's nice to know Jennifer Crusie still has it. According to the back of this lovely ARC that I got from LibraryThing and St. Martin's Press, this is the first solo novel Ms. Crusie has written for six years, when she published Bet Me. For those of you who don't know, Bet Me is one of my absolute favorite novels of ever and ever amen. It was the book that introduced me to Crusie and it was love at first sight.Maybe This Time is a little bit different than Crusie's other solo novels; this is a ghost story. Not just any ghost story but, according to Crusie's website, it's a modernish adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Maybe This Time is set in an English manor (or something similar) that has been relocated to southern Ohio, stones and all. It even has a moat. Andie is a teacher and in a weak moment agrees to relocate for a month from Columbus to get the children ready to attend public school and to rehabilitate this pair of kids who have gone through nannies like Kleenex. Her ex had inherited the children from a distant relation but after a disastrous attempt to send the older boy to a boarding school, hasn't had much contact with them other than to provide them money (he's actually not a jerk, just a lawyer). When Andie gets there, she finds the house and property to be a wreck, the housekeeper to be creepy, and the children strange and antisocial at best. She also soon finds herself questioning her belief that there's no such thing as ghosts and are the conversations she has at night in her bedroom with a young woman who claims to be a younger Andie real or is she dreaming? Why are the children so determined not to leave their house and why do they keep nannies running for the border? Most importantly, why did Andie agree to do this for her ex-husband North?Andie is a typical Crusie female protagonist - practical yet unconventional with a great sense of humor and a screwy love life. North is also consistent with Crusie's main men - an intelligent man who has a job with some authority, usually a cop or someone who owns their own business, and who is stumped by the woman he has picked to love. Andie and North married within twelve hours of first laying eyes on each other in a bar. They divorced a year later when Andie left him and have spent the last ten years subconsciously pining for each other. We don't get to see any of their marriage, pity that, but it amused me greatly that Andie, after getting a marriage proposal from her current boyfriend, visits North at work to return ten years worth of alimony checks. One a month for ten years, she didn't cash a single one, claiming that it was his way of reminding her of him.Also present is the supporting cast of oddballs and weirdos. Crusie isn't stingy this time either: there's an obnoxious tv reporter and her cameraman; a medium who curses like a sailor; North's younger brother, Sullivan a.k.a. Southie; two mothers-in-law; an expert on the paranormal who doesn't believe in ghosts; the ghosts; a private detective. No animals though.The paranormal aspect of Maybe This Time is better handled than the demons were in Wild Ride and the ghosts here make the story better, not worse, even though they brought a measure of malevolence not usually found in Crusie's books. I would have expected them to be there for humor, not malice, but I've never read The Turn of the Screw. The trademark Crusie humor is here, of course, and made me laugh out loud several times. I really enjoyed reading Maybe This Time but I didn't love it like Bet Me. I became worried when I read Wild Ride earlier this year but I'm okay now because Jenny Crusie is back!
    • 4/5
      Maybe This Time is a book about Andie and North ex's who haven't seen each other in 10 years. Andie's planning on getting married again and would like some closure first. North asks her to one little favor for him first. A Gothic house complete with ghosts, 2 self-sufficient kids, a Mrs. Danversish, housekeeper, along with a host of other characters makes for a fun, thriller of a read. Crusie writes characters who are quirky and vulnerable. I loved the story this is Cruisie's best book yet.
    • 3/5
      Angela Dawe is a delight. The ending is superb. The middle has some horrific slut shaming. It starts pretty slow, but things pick up around the seance and move quickly until the end. The kids are charming, and so are the secondary characters. I'm not much into Andie and North.
      Cw: possession referred to as r*pe, slut shaming of a possessed woman, North gaslighting Andie about ghosts not existing, long time possession of a secondary character who is held responsible for the ghost's crimes. The explicit coding of possession as r*pe makes the treatment of possessed characters problematic.
    • 5/5
      Ghost story plus romantic comedy with a full set of supporting characters. What’s not to love? Scary and funny both.
    • 4/5
      This book is a little bit weird but it’s funny and got interesting ideas. Hope you like it.
    • 5/5
      A great corn candy Halloween treat from the Carl Hiaasen of chick lit.
    • 4/5
      What an interesting book. It hearkens back in many ways to vintage Crusie: the quirky, lovable heroine, the uptight male (ex-husband in this case), the riotous cast of supporting characters. However, the ghosts are real and variously intent on possession or murder. Not what I expected -- I thought the story would be a lot more fluffy. It still has the romantic elements -- once again the heroine is described as being rounded and warm, or some such thing; the ex-husband is the career-driven alpha male, but the love story is almost incidental. If anything, the real love story is the love that develops between Andie and the two orphans, in particular, the engaging Alice. I am so happy that Crusie is on her own again without Mayer; however, I could not even finish the last book Wild Ride, so that is not all there is to it. Don't expect this to be the same as earlier works but it does come much closer than the books of the last few years.
    • 3/5
      I wasn't sure what I would think of this one, and it's definitely true that this is on the adult side of things. But it's also mostly a nice ghost story and a fun, light read.
    • 5/5
      I've been describing this to people as a snarky, modernized version of Rebecca. I know it's also the author's take on The Turn of the Screw. It isn't laugh out loud funny, but is excellently plotted and made me smile in quite a few places. I love the kids and Southy. I also liked the supernatural angle. It's a great ghost story. I'm keeping this one and expect to read it again. Very nicely done.
    • 4/5
      I love a good Jennifer Crusie novel. Her latest novel is a sweet and satisfying romp, that I devoured in two large bites.

      While Crusie may not be a literary great, and her novels may never be award-winning masterpieces, they are still incredibly enjoyable.. as much so as the chocolate chip cookies the main character is always baking. A Crusie novel once in a while is a perfectly enjoyable time, with rarely a tiny issue.

      The novel's characters are as wonderful as ever, quirky and fun. The back drop and added ghosties are an unusual treat, and one I met with whole-heartedly. (There is usually more romance in her novels, at least one more clinch added to get your blood steaming; but let's face it, this main character didn't even have time to shower regularly with everything she was faced with in the novel. So this time I won't mind at all.)

      The children, of course, were adorable as could be. You might love them within pages, like everyone else. I will always sing the hit song "Achy-breaky Heart" with the words "I don't like nuts, I really don't like nuts" from now on. Not that I EVER listen to that song...

      The ONLY problem I had with this novel is that Andie was always baking!! While it's a great incentive to get your audience back in the kitchen - and let's face it, most of the readers are going to be women. But almost daily batches of cookies and banana nut bread? Who was eating all of this, the ghosts?? Not that this was a problem, since this is literary-land, where just about anything goes.. but by the time I was halfway through the book last night, I HAD TO put it down, go into the kitchen, and make a batch of banana nut bread! Man, I'd better not gain any more weight, because of this novel... My kids were very happy to see it the next morning. My thighs? Not so much!!

      Anyway, if you are looking for a light-hearted read, the kind that takes a day, maybe two, to finish, then this is the book for you. It's been quite a while since Jennifer Crusie has written anything in book form, and I, for one, am damn glad she has done so. Her books always make me feel warm and happy inside, and give me a hope for the possibility of that "one true love" again.
    • 5/5
      relationships, ghosts, Ohio, mystery, humor, children I love almost everything written by Jennifer Crusie, and this one is a little crazier than most. It has romance, nasty ghosts, frightened kids, a nutsy mother in law and an even nuttier mother, a convenient but clueless fiancé, and two people who still love each other and are learning to communicate. And LOTS of humor! And almost all of this madness happens in a very weird house that was brought over from England and reassembled in rural southern Ohio. No spoilers here, just go ahead and enjoy! The audiobook is very well narrated by Angela Dawe.
    • 5/5
      I freely chose to review this book and was delighted to discover this unknown to me author, I will definitely look for more of her books! Andie Miller intended to be done with North for good and ten years of walking out of their marriage, she intended to give him back the alimony checks and start a new life with her new husband, but North tripped her guilty card and now she was heading south to the boonies....North Archer needed Andie to go to the southern part of the state to stay with two little kids that had so much death in their lives since he was given custody. Three nannies had already quit on him from the children's antics and he played the sympathy card to get his ex-wife to agree to a one month trial.
    • 3/5
      Andromeda "Andie" Miller has met the man perfect for her and is almost ready to accept easygoing Will's marriage proposal. She just has a couple loose ends to tie up, one being her ex-husband, North Archer. The story starts with Andie meeting with North so she can return all the alimony checks he sent and which she never cashed. It's Andie's way of closing the door on their relationship. He reluctantly agrees to take back the checks, but impulsively asks Andie to do him a favor. He needs her to care for two young relatives of whom he is now legal guardian. He sweetens the deal by offering her enough money to pay off her debt as well as pay for her upcoming wedding. All she has to do is postpone her wedding plans for a month or so, and ultimately figure out how to rid the children's current home of pesky ghosts which are rumored to have haunted the house for over 100 years. Of course, there is no such thing as ghosts... I was actually disappointed in this book. I keep hearing how funny Crusie's books are, and I even put this book on my wishlist a while ago in response to a favorable review which intrigued me. I didn't like the heroine at all. In instances that I think were supposed to be funny, I found she was incredibly insensitive and rude to people. I found a lot of the characters very likable, including North, little Alice and Carter, and Dennis the "ghost expert". I just didn't believe that a bond could exist between any of these people with the limited and unsentimental interactions they had.The ghost story picked up near the end, and I did like how Andie and North finally resolved issues they held in dispute over the years.
    • 3/5
      I'd give this book 3.5 stars. I love Jennifer Cruisie but this book seemed to be lacking something... Don't get me wrong, it's still a good book. Normally Cruisie's book contain more humour than this one though.
    • 5/5
      Entertaining paranormal story that kept my interest throughout. It had lots of humor but also sensitivity to vulnerable children and a romance trying not to repeat the old mistakes. Andie tries to get closure with her ex-husband North so she can marry again but ends up doing one more favor in watching a couple troubled kids.
    • 4/5
      I procrastinated reading this book, even though I'm a huge Jennifer Crusie fan, because this one sounded a bit 'meh'. But I was completely wrong. A great ghost story with a strong main character that is typical of Jennifer Crusie's fiction. This was a quick, fun read that was just a tiny bit tense at times, with not all the ghosts being of the friendly variety. I really enjoyed it and it is sure to become one of my Crusie favourites, along with Agnes and the Hitman and Fast Women.
    • 4/5
      Hooray! Jennifer Crusie is back! I have always loved Crusie novels for their off-beat kind of humor, and interesting, if not a little wacky, characters. This book had all that and more! It was really enjoyable to read a Jennifer Crusie novel again.

      That having been said, I agree with others who have said that this was more "ghost story" than romance, and that the character of North seemed a bit flat. I get that he was supposed to be the one steady "rock" and the one calming influence in this whole story, but that doesn't mean he can't have more character. I liked him OK, I just wanted to really see what Andie saw in him.

      EDIT:
      My previous review talked about how all the 80's and 90's references made the book seem dated to me. Then, it was pointed out to me that it was supposed to be set in 1992....says it right in one of the first pages. So...I retract my original complaints about dated references.

      That having been said though...sorry, it's still odd, and the story still seems dated because....well....it is. Why? The only answer is "because." Another one of those quirky Crusie things? But...this one doesn't work for me. Instead of feeling nostalgic, again, it just seems dated. I don't know...I guess I feel like a "contemporary" novel should take place in the time period it is released in. If this had been billed as some sort of newfangled "historical," and it was made very obvious it was purposely written in the past to be nostalgic, then I guess I might not have had such a negative reaction to the dated references. But, one line of "This book takes place in 1992. Because." almost makes it seem as if this was an old novel that had never made it, but was suddenly revived, and instead of going through the hassle of updating all the references, they put a note at the beginning and now it's fine. Not saying that's what happened, I'm just saying that's how it feels to me. At the risk of repeating myself: Odd.

      BUT...

      Despite those criticisms, I found the book to be completely enjoyable and fun and I highly recommended it for any Crusie fan.
    • 4/5
      Andie and North divorced 10 years ago after being married only a year. But, just before Andie is planning to get remarried, she has some unfinished business to clear up with North. While taking care of that, North asks if she will go stay with his niece and nephew, now orphans, who have had a really hard time. North is hoping Andie can convince the kids to leave the house they have been living in to come stay with him. But, when Andie gets to the house, there is much more there than she bargained for! Not only does Andie fall in love with those “troubled” kids, there are.. spirits... who don't want to let the kids go. I ended up really enjoying this. I listened to the audio, and am happy to say it was very rare for my mind to wander. I don't like kids, but Carter and Alice grew on me. I loved the ghost story in this book, and that was mainly why I picked it up, as I'm not always a romance fan (but I can get “into” some of them). This one was easy to get into because it was heavier on the ghost story and lighter on the romance. There were also some great characters in this book.
    • 4/5
      I was so excited when I heard Crusie was finally releasing a new novel. I adore her contemporaries.

      This had all the classic components of a Crusie novel: Spunky heroine, witty dialogue, wacky, but interesting secondary characters and a plot that's all over the place. It was heavenly.

      I did feel it moved slow in places, and I would have like to see a bit more of Andie and North together, though I loved what there was of them.

      I didn't mind the ghost aspects and I thought the secondary characters really livened the story up, especially the kids.
    • 4/5
      A charming story of a divorced couple, two trouble children, and a haunted house. Loved the characters, ending was mildly unsatisfying, but overall a very sweet story.
    • 4/5
      Oh, very enjoyable. I got in the mail earlier this week and spent the evening reading this book. (I think it may have arrived on Wednesday and I started reading it after my knitting class and I finished it that same evening.)

      Like eating a sack of potato chips without the resulting upset tummy. I liked the supernatural aspects and the (characteristic) light tone of the books. Hmmm, no important dog in this one.
    • 5/5
      Great story - lots of romance, humor, paranormal activity, and really likable characters.
    • 5/5
      So. Good Crusie. Glad to see her back more nearly in the romance field.

      If you don't read Crusie's romances, go back and read some others first. This is great, fabulous and wonderful but I loved Welcome to Temptation and some of the others more.

      Brief notes - usually Crusie is a romance and a mystery - these are romance paranormal/almost borderline horror in with the romance.

      Who cares - it's a new Crusie.
    • 4/5
      Sweet story--not terribly realistic at times, but a fun vintage Crusie story. Much better than her recent collaborations, which all seem to be lacking a bit of her usual zest.
    • 3/5
      Solid effort from Crusie although not as funny as some of her others. More focused on the ghost story which was a little heavy for my post holiday reading. But as always she nails characters and their interpersonal relationships in very realistic way.
    • 4/5
      I do not read many straight up romance novels; they're just not my style. I make an exception for Jennifer Crusie, who Katelyn introduced me to my freshman year of college (Welcome to Temptation). Her novels are light, funny and generally have a bunch of awesome pop culture references.

      Maybe This Time is a bit different than her other books because of the fantasy element (or is it?). The ghost plot line left me a little cold (pun, haha, get it?). That was the overarching plot of the book, so you couldn't take it out, but it just didn't work for me somehow. I also had some trouble accepting North as a name. I mean, come on!

      Jennifer Crusie fans will still want to read this one, but it isn't her best. If you haven't read any Crusie yet, I recommend Welcome to Temptation or Fast Women.
    • 4/5
      I really like the humor in Jennifer Crusie's books - I don't know why I haven't read more of them. Since we read The Turn of the Screw in high school I was particularly amused by the references to it throughout the story as well. A fun romance with ghosts thrown in for good measure, this was perfect brain candy for me.