Book Review: Semi-Sweet by Roisin Meaney

Semi-Sweet: A Novel of Love and Cupcakes by Roisin Meaney

Publisher: 5 Spot

Publish Date: April 25, 2011

Paperback, 400 pages 
Fiction
 ISBN: 978-0446570114

**Check out my giveaway here.**

My Review:
Why I read this: One word - cupcakes, yum!  And isn't the cover just delightful - the old bike, the yummy cupcakes.  You want to walk right into the cover.


My thoughts:  Delightful and absorbing, spend an afternoon with the residents of this small town in Ireland and enjoy their stories.

Semi-sweet gave me so much more that I thought it would.  From the blurb I was thinking it was a chick-lit type book focusing on Hannah's life as she recovers from a break-up and opens her own business.  While Hannah is the star of the book, it truly involves a lot of people in the town of Clongarvin.  It's one of those books where the small town and it's inhabitants really come to life through the story.  There are ups and downs for the story characters.  There is what-goes-around-comes-around.  There are delightful characters and nosy characters and characters that you didn't expect at all.  And at the end of the book you feel like you have gotten to know all of them.

I truly enjoyed reading this book - it was different from a lot of books I read where you tend to learn about one set of characters at a time, or one family.  This one branches out to bridge club, co-workers and even old schoolmates.  There is some of everything, romance, lust, friendship and lifelong marriage.  I really loved how Ms. Meaney showed all walks of like and how real the characters seemed.  Hannah's parents seemed like an older married couple, the wife gossiping and talking, the husband listening while going on with what he is doing, yet they love each other dearly.  Hannah and her best friend Adam are also another great relationship.  All outsiders wonder why they have never gotten together, but they just know it wouldn't work and that they work best as friends.

I can't say enough about this book and I will be finding more of Ms. Meaney's books in the future.  I think she has a knack for giving characters a great story and bringing them to life before your eyes.

My Rating: 4.5/5.0


About the Book:


Hannah Robinson, is just about to open the doors to her new shop Cupcakes on the Corner when out of the blue her boyfriend Patrick announces that he's leaving her for another woman. Faced with starting a business on her own, Hannah begins to wonder if her life-long dream has just turned into a nightmare. 

So her best friend Adam sets his birthday as a deadline - seven months to make her shop a success, or walk away from it all. And as Hannah immerses herself in early-morning icing, she soon discovers that she's too busy to think about Patrick and his now pregnant girlfriend ...or to notice an increasingly regular customer who has recently developed a sweet tooth for all things cupcake. 

But while Hannah is slowly piecing her life back together, family friend Alice's is falling apart. Her husband Tom's drinking is getting out of control and things are about to get a whole lot worse. As the seven-month milestone approaches, Hannah must decide her future. And while she's figuring out what's really important, it becomes clear to everyone that happiness in life, and in love, is all in the making.


About the Author: 

Roisin Meaney was born in Listowel, Co Kerry, Ireland. She has lived in the US, Canada, Africa, and Europe. In 2002, Roisin won the Tivoli Write a Bestseller competition with her first novel, The Daisy Picker, which was subsequently followed by Putting Out Stars. Roisin is currently based in Limerick. SEMI-SWEET is her sixth book.

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FTC Information: I received this book from the publisher for an honest review.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws.  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.