This book gets honors for including many of the textbook elements of romantic comedy: a slightly silly set-up, motives that will lead to comic misunderstandings, and a plot that allows the characters’ crazier actions to boomerang on them. But it gets demerits for including too many of the textbook defects as well. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I’d hoped.

Leah Smith has been a self-confessed dork her whole life. Having just finished her doctoral thesis in sociology, she decides to put her research to the test: does appearance matter when applying for a job? Her brother, Steve, runs a cosmetics company called Just Peachy, and he agrees to let her use his company as her case study. She interviews for a secretarial position once as herself, and once as a blonde with enormous cleavage and wearing four inch stilettos. Her thesis is that the blonde bimbo will get the job, even with a resume cluttered with short-term, low-wage jobs. Steve disagrees, saying the educated, sensible candidate will be more impressive. They make a bet on which will be hired, with the loser agreeing to go on a blind date of the winner’s arranging.

Mark Colson is a retired FBI man, now a private security expert hired by Just Peachy to investigate possible corporate espionage. A competing firm, Apple Blossom Cosmetics, recently launched a number of new products that bear suspicious resemblances to Just Peachy products. Apple Blossom’s CEO, Kate Bloom, vigorously denies it, but Steve isn’t convinced, even if he is attracted to Kate. Mark is setting up a surveillance system at Just Peachy when Leah comes for her interviews. His, er, suspicions are immediately aroused by her floozy appearance as Candi Devereaux, so he listens in on her interview, then follows her out of the building and asks her out, just to do a thorough investigation, you know. When she returns later for her interview as Leah Smith, he’s suspicious of her, so he follows her out of the building but does not ask her out – whereupon Leah, affronted that he would ask out the blonde tramp but not her, asks him out.

There’s a lot of masquerading in this book. Steve is posing as his own twin sister, Stephanie, in order to keep up the front of a female-owned business. While Steve is a nice guy, Stephanie is a real pain, accusing Kate Bloom of theft and pinning back employees’ ears left and right. Leah poses as a brainless bimbo, Kate poses as a man, and Mark poses as a handyman. There’s a scene where Kate, Steve, Leah, Mark, and a friend of Mark’s all end up in the same restaurant for dinner, and not one of the goes as themselves. As Leah thinks to herself, no one would believe this story if she wrote it.

And then there’s the matchmaking. First there’s the bet Leah and Steve make on page four. Steve allows a variety of misperceptions to accrue between Mark and Leah, wasting Mark’s “very expensive” time, because Leah needs to date more. Then Leah hatches a plan to get Steve to go out more. Mark’s friends Jake and LeAnne try to stir things up between Leah and Mark, and Mark’s sister Shelley and Leah’s Gramps toss in their two cents’ worth as well. All the characters spend a lot of time discussing each others’ relationships.

The premise of this book really appealed to me: a plain Jane grad student dressing up like Jessica Simpson to study sociological effects of appearance? Well, who hasn’t wondered how the other side lives? I was very disposed to overlook some things. So I didn’t roll my eyes too much when when Leah wears an inflatable bra to her interview and promptly punctures it. I wished Mark hadn’t seen through Leah’s disguise immediately – by recognizing her forehead, of all things – but comedy could still ensue. When Mark decided to investigate Leah/Candi by asking both of her out, we were on thinner ice, even before Mark tells Steve he suspects Leah/Candi of being the spy, and that he’s considering seducing the truth out of her. This didn’t seem very professional to me, nor very heroic, because Mark had already admitted he was attracted to Leah as Leah.

There were some other things that bothered me after a while. In several scenes, Steve somehow becomes Mark, even when it was clear he still had to be Steve. This happens more than once, and no, I wasn’t reading an uncorrected galley. Although the espionage plot is addressed, it flies way under the radar for a long time, even though it underpins the entire story as well as most of the characters’ actions. And hitting one pet peeve of mine dead-on, the men talk like women, especially to each other. Mark and a fellow FBI man have a conversation that really sounds like two women. I even asked my husband, just to be sure I wasn’t delusional, and he agreed. This may sound minor, but it really bothered me that such a macho guy like Mark could be mistaken for a woman!

I would still recommend this book to fans of romantic comedy; it’s fun, inventive, and has plenty of sparkle between the hero and heroine. But there’s a fair amount to overlook as well, so I must make it a somewhat qualified recommendation.