gradschool: ain't she sweet?

This semester's required reading was Aint She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

I don't usually read romance novels any more (the first adult books I read were Victoria Holt's historical romances, but I transitioned very quickly to scifi, which I started at the same time), though I know the names of the main authors from my mom and from looking through my gramma's here-take-some-books bags. Oh, and A always had a huge selection of those twenty-something-working-girl-who-likes-to-shop books, but I've only read Bridget Jones and maybe one other. Did I read Devil Wears Prada, or just watch the movie eighty times? I don't remember.

Anyway, I meant to take a little time reading this book and post my reactions as I went, maybe every few chapters, but that sort of didn't happen. I read the whole thing in under twelve hours. That was my reaction.

A more official review:

Romance as a genre seems to have a sort of redheaded-stepchild opinion of it in the mainstream view, but this book proves that even a genre that contains things like the new-book-every-month Harlequin series can produce something fresh and strong that exists on it's own merit even if you take out the required love scenes. The romance, while the center of the story, is not the point of the narrative, but the result of it: Sugar Beth was not a nice person when she left home and now she's coming back to deal with all the heartache and ruin she left behind, and that's the point of the story. It's about how the past damages the future and how we get through that to where we need to be.

The characters are solid and distinct, for the most part (though the SeaWillows kind of blend together or come out a little one-note when they're all in the same room), and fit together the way real people do, in shifting hierarchies informed by everything that's come before and supported by mutual friendship and love, hindered by mutual grudges, changed by time but not rewritten. Fifteen years is a long time, and this book captures the distance covered in that time really well.

Additionally, as the story moves on, it becomes a little metafictional, which I always love: having a writer as a main character makes it easy, and even if the end had a little bit of a Little Women feel to it, it was the happy ending the genre requires, and it was suitable.

My only quibble is that the last third of the book went faster than the previous two-thirds, and it would have been nice to have as much time as the rest of the book got to react and ponder and guess outcomes... although that also would have meant wallowing in Sugar Beth's personal anguish, when a lot of the charm of the rest was that she doesn't really do that-- she's strong and stubborn and desperate and still manages to be principled and daring and responsible for her past actions. She's the sort of woman we kind of hope all horrible high school rich bitches can become, and she earns her happy ending.

I especially liked the characters of Sugar Beth and Colin-- even in the beginning when they don't even like each other, they fit together and draw together in a way that seems honest and organic, and the fact that they fall for each other makes perfect sense because of it.

The structure is the classic trial-of-the-heroine story, but it's handled in such a way that it seems like it's all free will-- you don't see the framework of the plot showing through and you believe the characters when they make their decisions and choose their paths. The inevitability of romance means they had to eventually wind up together, but nothing says it had to go this well or make this much sense. Nothing says it had to heal the whole town as it patched up the battered psyches of the two mains, either-- and that's what makes it above the rest of the genre and lets it cross over into something that could be labeled 'epic' almost, the fact that it's not just the story of these two people, but the story of the whole town and a little bit of the generation before them. It's aware of it's own context and it lets all that play out, while keeping it personal and realistic and intimate.

Good choice of a representative, Romance Division!