Bittersweet

Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

And the award for the lousiest friend of the year goes to...

Hudson Avery!

The story starts with Hudson being on the verge of becoming a figure-skating star. On the day of a very important competition, she discovers her parents are about to divorce and her whole life shatters into pieces like a beautiful ice sculpture.

Fast-forward 4 years. Hudson Avery is now 16 and, besides going to school, she works in her mom's diner, baking the most delicious cupcakes ever.

She's permanently hung her skates, but when the occasion arises for a spot in the limelight again, Avery starts to wonder if anonymity is really what she wants in life and what her dreams are really made of.

Bittersweet was for me a very cute, frustrating read - and I never thought I would use those two adjectives together.

Let's say it definitely lived up to the oxymoron it represents.

So let's categorize what I liked and what I didn't according to that:

THE BITTER:

As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, Avery is a very lousy friend.

She's probably worse than a back-stabbing one, because she's of the kind that walks away, cuts you out of her life without even telling you why, and you start wondering if you were even friends to begin with. Her behavior definitely clashed with her hilariousness - I loved her Parallel Hudson references - and I wondered more than once why did she have to push everybody away so much, especially the people that really cared about us.

Her mother is not much better in that sense, and she got on my nerves quite a bit. How can you expect your daughter's dreams to be the same as yours? I'm quite sure it's encoded in a mother's DNA the desire for her children to have a better life, not a mediocre one. How can she want her daughter to take over a diner?! Beats me.

The last bitter element of this book was the anti-climactic climax. I waited and waited for it to happen and when it came.... I didn't get it. No, scratch that, I wanted to whack Hudson on the head with a skate .

THE SWEET:

Now, I come from a country which is home to the most famous cuisine in the world. American restaurants here are called McDonald's (well... everywhere else too).

We do not have cupcakes. At all. Reading this book, I wished I could have jumped on a plane and gone to the States just to grab some like those described in here.

And Ockley, you definitely want to put pictures at the beginning of each chapter for these mouth-watering creations!

Anyway, the whole cupcake theme was extremely cute and fun (and by the way, WHY is there a cracker on the cover?! You tell me about cupcakes for the whole book and then you put a cracker on the cover?) and it gave a colorful and sensorial feel to the story - I swear I could almost smell them....

The romance is also really cute. Aside from the presence of my newly acquired favorite hottie icon, the hockey player.... what was I going to say? Yeah, there is no aside... HOT HOCKEY PLAYER!

Bittersweet is a light, humorous read that, in my opinion, manages to entertain without coming out as shallow. A good book to kick back and relax after a long day at work.Not to be read on an empty stomach.