My Take in Brief: I loved this book. But I can’t believe it’s an SEP.
Setting: Contemporary small town Parrish, Mississippi
Heroine and Hero: Sugar Beth Carey, blonde knockout, former wealthy queen of the mean girls, returning home divorced, widowed, and poor, but much wiser and more humble. Colin Byrne, aristocratic (i.e. silk pj wearing, tall and big nosed) British born writer, has made a successful career writing a nonfiction chronicle of Parish life. Both in their 30s.
Plot: There’s a lot going on in this book, so much it veers towards women’s fiction. Sugar Beth, in dire need of funds, has returned to Parrish to retrieve a valuable painting from the cottage her aunt has left to her. Colin, who now resides in the manor home Sugar Beth grew up in (on the same property as the cottage), plans to take revenge on the woman who once ruined his teaching career by falsely accusing him of sexual harassment. At the same time, Sugar Beth’s return exposes fault lines in the marriage of Winnie, Sugar Beth’s estranged half sister, and Ryan, the high school boyfriend Sugar Beth jilted, and creates drama and excitement for the rest of Sugar Beth’s old gang, still known as the Sea Willows.
Conflict: In the first part of the book, the conflict between Colin and Sugar Beth is that he hates her. Later, the conflict is that Sugar Beth, thrice married, has no wish to fall in love again. The two other significant conflicts involve decades old resentment and anger between Sugar Beth and Winnie, the latter of whom is the product of Sugar Beth’s father’s long time affair with Winnie’s mother, and a deep festering undiscussed “open” secret in Winnie and Ryan’s marriage.
Word on the Web:
The Romance Reader: 4 hearts
Musings of a Bilbiophile (Brie), B
Flight Into Fantasy, Shannon C., “highly recommended”
Racy Romance Review:
I have a very complicated reader relationship with SEP. I know this is romance reader sacrilege, but I truly hate her caveman jock heroes — Dan Calebow of It Had to Be You, Bobby Tom of Heaven, Texas, and Cal of Nobody’s Baby But Mine, although I enjoyed parts of all of those books. I strongly prefer her other types of heroes — Gabe of Dream a Little Dream, Ren of Breathing Room, even Heath of Match Me If You Can (a book which featured one of the only less-than-spectacular-to-them first sex scene b/t the h/h that I can recall reading) This despite the fact that the latter male characters and the books themselves were not necessarily as memorable and strong. It’s a case of my political and aesthetic tastes at war, I guess.
In Ain’t She Sweet?, we are introduced to an SEP classic — a bedraggled, down on her luck, but still beautiful heroine, who uses her sexuality like a shield and a weapon, returning to her home town, tail between her legs. But I couldn’t believe it when I opened Ain’t She Sweet? to find a writer hero with an exquisite design sense who “had the face of a dandy, vaguely effete”, wearing a purple velvet smoking jacket over black silk i pajamas. WTF? Not to worry — SEP later signals his masculinity by giving him big workman hands and a bricklaying past and the world tilted back on its axis again. Still, I was thrilled with Colin, even if he wasn’t as fully developed as I would have liked (a subplot involving his writer’s block was more of a chance for Sugar Beth to demonstrate her empathy and womanly nurturing than providing true insight into his character). It felt so good to be reading an SEP without having to gargle frequently with my limited edition Votes for Women Mouthwash that I let that slide.
Anyone who has read an SEP knows she can write dialogue, especially witty banter, with the best of them. Colin is an unusually urbane and verbal hero, so we get a lot of it in this book. In order to make her pay for the lies she told as a teen which sent Colin back to England in disgrace, he gets Sugar Beth — once the richest girl in town – to work as his housekeeper, in the very home where she was raised. But she is single mindedly fixed on the goal of finding the missing painting and refuses to let a little degradation distract her. Here’s an example. Sugar Beth is preparing for a dinner party Colin has planned (little does she know he intends to make her squirm by inviting half the town. Lighter shades To Have and To Hold):
Sugar Beth: “…make sure you take the cost of that pitcher out of his check when you pay him tonight.”
Colin: “I’ll do that.” The caterer had probably broken the pitcher because he was staring down her blouse.
“No, you won’t. Except for me, you’re Mr. Big Spender. Even with that incompetent West Coast weasel of a caterer.”
“Such prejudice from someone who once lived in California herself.”
“Well, sure, but I was drunk most of the time.”
He caught his smile just in time. He wouldn’t give in to that seductive charm. Her self-deprecating sense of humor was anothr manipulation, her way of making sure no one else threw the first punch.
“Is that all?”
She eyed his dark trousers and long sleeved grape colored shirt. “If only I hadn’t sent your dueling pistols to the cleaners.”
He’d promised himself he’s stop sparring with her, but the words came out anyway. “At least I still have my riding crop. Just the thing, I’ve heard for disciplining an unruly servant.”
I also loved Sugar Beth. She was smart, funny, and strong. SEP doesn’t minimize her awfulness as a teen, but helps us to understand how it arose. I confess I had to work extra hard to work hard to suspend my disbelief at the idea that a town leader in the conservative rural South would have a second, private, family a few miles down the road from his public one, and that everyone, including his lawful wife, would look the other way, but SEP made it work. Most of her character journey took place prior to the events in the novel, when she had two unsuccessful marriages (which involved abuse, infidelity and alcoholism) finally finding the kind of paternal love she had always been denied in her brief third marriage to a wealthy man decades her senior, who died penniless. The work Sugar Beth has to do is less on her own character in isolation than on the relationships she left behind — with individuals, like her half sister Winnie, but also with Frenchman’s Bride itself, and indeed with the town of Parrish. In some ways, Colin, who owns Frenchman’s Bride and has close relationships with many of the people Sugar Beth hurt and left behind, and who himself was hurt by her, represents this work of restoration and forgiving. I thought it was ingenious.
Some reviewers felt that after 15 years, the old high school chums (nauseatingly, still traveling in a pack called “the Sea Willows”) should have put Sugar Beth’s sins behind them, which were, after all, many of their own sins. I can see that point. On the other hand, high school is a very vulnerable time, when everything emotional is magnified 100 times. If you are still living in your old home town and dealing with the same people, it can be easy to hold on to the past.
Winnie in particular comes up for a lot of reader criticism, and I agree that she was stunted and also given a free pass by the author for what I consider a sin worse than most of Sugar Beth’s. Winnie got her husband on the rebound from the larger than life Sugar Beth, and has never quite gotten over being second to her glamorous half sister. I liked the way SEP shows us a marriage which is functioning despite a rather large elephant in the room. She didn’t have the space to fully develop Winnie and Ryan’s overcoming their problems, but I was glad to see a long time married couple get some air time, something SEP does in other books (In Nobody’s Baby But Mine and Breathing Room, for example).
The small town southern setting was really well done, and this is not something I usually associate with SEP. Seeing the town through Sugar Beth’s eyes, past and present, was one of the most compelling parts of the novel.
Despite his lack of character development, the romance between Colin and Sugar Beth was mature, and sexy, and fun, and quite satisfying (especially effective was the party scene when he realizes he has gone too far and begins to sympathize with her), but I read this one for Sugar Beth. She is by far my favorite SEP heroine. She’s downtrodden without being totally abject (like Rachel in Dream a Little Dream or the pathetic heroine in Heaven, Texas), she has a knowing sexuality and no fear of using her looks, without sending the message that a woman’s allure to men is her only ticket to success and happiness (like the “bimbo empowerment” heroine in It Had to Be You). I’ll have to reread Dream a Little Dream to be sure, but I think it’s my favorite book by this author.
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#1 by Sherry Thomas on July 3, 2009 - 12:00 pm
I became a SEP fan with this book.
I’d read a bunch of her “classic” works and I couldn’t figure out whether SEP was a modern woman or someone of extremely traditional bent who just happened to excel at writing sassy women. (Her heroines tended to be these practically virgin–if not virginal altogether–women. Not to say that I myself am not a practically virginal woman–ha!–but jeez louise give me something more daring in fiction already.)
This book served as the reassurance I was seeking. That yes, she is forward-thinking enough and empathetic enough and skillful enough to write a heroine like Sugar Beth.
The success and failure of a book typically rests on the heroine for me. But after AINT SHE SWEET, I’ve relaxed and adopted an “one eye open, one eye closed” approach to SEP heroines.
My favorite female SEP character is Portia from MATCH ME IF YOU CAN, btw.
#2 by SarahT on July 3, 2009 - 3:56 pm
I loved Sugar Beth but was less enamored of Colin. At the end of the day, Sugar Beth was a kid when she did all that hateful stuff. Colin, Winnie, and co. are adults when they behave spitefully towards her. This bothered me quite a bit.
#3 by Helen Burgess on July 3, 2009 - 5:57 pm
Sugar Beth grows as a character but the people she left behind behave like whiney toddlers. I really loath that they damn near make Sugar Beth sweat blood to get their acceptance. Me, I’d have left them miles behind in their narrow stupid little world. You might guess this book raises my blood pressure a tad.
#4 by heidenkind on July 4, 2009 - 3:03 am
I liked this book, although I didn’t like it as much as you did. Like Sarah I thought Sugar Beth was an awesome character; but Colin’s kind of a dud.
#5 by Jessica on July 4, 2009 - 9:19 pm
I would distinguish the issue of Colin being a dud (I didn’t think he was that flat, but you know what I mean) from the issue of the bad behavior of the Sea Willows. The former is a problem with the author’s writing (she should write a more compelling hero). The latter — assuming she meant them to be unsympathetic — actually shows how good her writing is: we hate those women, so SEP has done her job. It’s an issue of personal taste if a reader doesn’t like reading about immature mean girls, but I don’t think it’s a criticism of the book. Does that make sense? Am I off base?
And Sherry — I agree, MMIYC is the other SEP in my top 3 SEP books, largely because of Portia.
#6 by Kaetrin on July 5, 2009 - 4:25 am
I liked this book but not as much as other SEP’s. But then, I’m in the category that loved Dan Calebow and Bobby Tom Denton, as well as Ren from Breathing Room – albeit in different ways and for different reasons.
It is a testament to SEP’s writing that I could forgive Sugar Beth for the horrid things she did to Winnie – especially the scene in the women’s showers/change rooms when Winnie had her period. Having been on the receiving end of some of that mean girl behaviour in school (although, not that thank God!) it hits one of my hot buttons and Sugar Beth’s behaviour especially in that scene was atrocious.
As an Australian, I don’t know anyone actually called Sugar Beth or similar (is it actually all that common in the US??) but I went along with it as it fit with this book. Same thing with the Sea Willows. But, I did understand the dynamic of the group even if the group at my school didn’t have a name. There are plenty of cliquey women’s groups (men too probably) both in school and in adulthood that behave just like this so that kinda rang true.
The first “less-than-spectacular-to-them” sex scene I remember was Davy and Tilda from Faking It by Jenny Crusie – and (of course) it entirely fit with the theme of “faking” in the book.
#7 by Meanne on July 6, 2009 - 3:13 pm
This was the first book of SEP that ‘wowed’ me. I suspect it may have had a lot to do with the fact that it was my very first foray into audiobooks early last year and the narrator just happend to be the late award-winning Kate Fleming/ Anna Fields who did a fabulous job. With this one book I became a SEP fan, an audiobook fan and a Kate Fleming fan as well..So it will always have a special place in my heart. I’ve also enjoyed the subsequent SEP books I’ve listened to: Dream A Little Dream, Lady Be Good and Kiss an Angel…
Incidentally, the only paperback that I read ( a few months before I listened to Ain’t She Sweet ) was a ‘meh’ for me. I bought This Dream of Mine because of all the great reviews and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t moved by it like so many people were….
#8 by Rosina Lippi on July 6, 2009 - 5:01 pm
I like your review style, very detailed and thoughtful, and I agree absolutely about SEP in general and this book in particular. I really loved Sugar Beth and Colin both. One word of caution: do not listen to the audiobook. The narrator gives Colin a completely outdated and absolutely unrealistic high-brow, toffee-nosed English accent that makes him sound like a poser to anybody from England. I played a bit of it for my husband (who is a Brit) and he couldn’t stop laughing.
I put this book at the top of SEP’s work.
#9 by Eva on July 9, 2009 - 6:05 pm
One of my all time favorite books. My favorite scene? Where Sugar Beth waitresses for Colin’s party. That was the make it or break it scene for me. Had she grasped one ounce of ‘poor victim of childhood’ to her breast, I wouldn’t have respected her character as much. SEP made her own her sins and I loved the book because of it.
#10 by Jessica on July 9, 2009 - 9:08 pm
Eva wrote:
I agree with you 100%.
#11 by Randi on July 10, 2009 - 3:18 pm
Kaetrin:
two first names is very common in the South East portion of the US, as well as Texas (see Bobby Tom Denton). And my understanding of Southern culture is that is it not unusual for groups of women to give themselves a name.