By: Renee Carlino
Published By: Simon & Schuster, Atria
Released : Available Now
Details : Paperback for honest review from publisher, 296 Pages
RATING: 4.5 WILL , WILL WOW YOU STARS!!!
Blurb : Goodreads
"You have to teach your heart and mind how to sing together…then you'll hear the sound of your soul."
Mia Kelly thinks she has it all figured out. She's an Ivy League graduate, a classically trained pianist, and the beloved daughter of a sensible mother and offbeat father. Yet Mia has been stalling since graduation, torn between putting her business degree to use and exploring music, her true love.
When her father unexpectedly dies, she decides to pick up the threads of his life while she figures out her own. Uprooting herself from Ann Arbor to New York City, Mia takes over her father's café, a treasured neighborhood institution that plays host to undiscovered musicians and artists. She's denied herself the thrilling and unpredictable life of a musician, but a chance encounter with Will, a sweet, gorgeous, and charming guitarist, offers her a glimpse of what could be. When Will becomes her friend and then her roommate, she does everything in her power to suppress her passions-for him, for music-but her father's legacy slowly opens her heart to the possibility of something more.
A "heartbreaking and romantic" (Aestas Book Blog) debut, Sweet Thing explores the intensity and complexities of first love and self-discovery.
BOOK REVIEW by Michelle:
I received Sweet Thing in the mail from the lovely Simon & Schuster Australia and I pretty much ditched what I was reading to crack Sweet Thing open.
I love the cover.
I love Will Ryan.
I have a full heart for Will Ryan.
This book did not come without its major frustrations for me. I just finished it after I dropped hubs at work this morning and I parallel parked...that is a big thing for me J at the beach and devoured the last eighty pages.
Man. Man. Man.
Will is the most beautiful, patient, caring, sweet, loveable character I have read in a while.
Man. Man. Man.
Mia is the most frustrating, need to shake some sense into her, assuming person I have read in a while.
She made me want to throw my book out the car window this morning. If it wasn’t for Will I may just have thrown it.
I remember reading Beautiful Disaster and what Travis Maddox did to me. He made mistakes. He made me face plant. He made me hold my face and shut my eyes and internally scream.
He is flawed but he learns from his mistakes.
We love Trav.
He broke our hearts.
I think there is a fine line between writing a character who is flawed and continually makes mistakes and the author over doing it.
At times I did get absolutely lost in my thoughts as to the why of Mia’s such thoughtless comments and actions in front of Will.
But this is the beauty of this story. It makes the reader feel a whole rainbow of emotions.
We feel red with anger.
We feel blue with sadness.
We feel green with jealousy.
We see glimpses of yellow with Mia’s character. She did have sunshine moments.
Will is perfect. He knows himself, he just needs to work a few things out. He knows what it takes to make him happy. He is not motivated by money or possessions.
He loves people.
Will is a very special character. He is likable from the get go. He just slides into your heart like warm honey and he stays there.
Mia, had to work for my affection.
Jenny her friend did not. Jenny was my calm. Jenny was my voice of reason.
“Well, okay, Mia, we’ll leave it alone. I can’t help you, anyway. Stop playing games, that’s all I’m gonna say.”
The thing with Mia is she is 25 yrs old. I could understand her behaviour more if she was a teenager. I actually forgot that Will was twenty nine because he was quite goofy in a very sexy way.
He was my sweet thing.
Mia was handed a business, handed a sweet roof over her head. She didn't have to work to get those. Sure she worked in the business, and worked hard. She was confused about where her life was taking her, but she had good friends and steady income. She had shelter and a mother and step father who loved her. Sure she lost her biological father. These things happen in life. She had a brilliant relationship with him when he was alive. It was a sad thing to happen, but it happens to a lot of people, every second of the day. She spent time with her biological father. She didn't miss out on his love.
Jenny lost too. But, she didn’t wallow in it. Jenny is just a brilliant friend.
Martha and Sheil are too. They are like two wise women who give Mia the freedom to make mistakes, but are waiting in the wings when she needs them.
Mia is richer in more ways than one, than most people at twenty five have.
She just doesn't realize it.
Yet.
I gotta say Renee really and I mean really killed me with some of the thoughtless comments Mia made. This morning sitting at the beach reading, one comment just crushed me.
I mean it CRUSHED me.
I can see why it crushed Will.
The straw that broke the camels back.
I didn’t really see her properly apologize for her continual behavior. I would have liked to have seen that.
Travis in Beautiful Disaster got down on his knees and bled all over the pavement with his emotions screaming all over the page at the reader.
I felt his pain.
Mia was just a bit of a pain. I kept asking myself what Will saw in her. Sure there was the musical connection. Mia is very talented but she kept holding back. I realize she was going through a tough time in her life, but sometimes I felt she was very shallow.
She knew when she was torturing Will. She would deliberately mislead him.
That I had a lot of trouble with.
“An old friend. He and his fiancée came over for dinner.” He huffed and I knew it had tortured him until that moment, but just like that, things were straightened out and we were finally communicating.
She was a repeat offender. Will did not do that to her.
God that lad is patient.
Mia did redeem herself more in the latter part of the book. I’m not sure if I was totally sold on her redemption. Will is a very forgiving person.
I would have liked to have spent longer on Mia’s journey of self discovery and putting her fears to rest. It would have explained to me more of her inner turmoil, her gigantic fears she was carrying around with her like a hundred pound weight on her shoulders.
I was running away full force into a plain old ordinary existence when I had angels-singing, heart-thrashing love reaching out for me. Why couldn’t I allow myself to let him in?
Will wasn’t a man-whore. He was a guy who liked women. They liked him. He is artistic, very talented and won’t compromise on his plans. I loved that about Will. I felt like Mia didn’t even attempt to understand Will and his dreams.
I felt very sad for Mia being shallow about what she felt her dream guy should come with. She only had to open her eyes and see how happy her father was with his cafe and the people he surrounded himself with.
But lessons can take a while to learn and Mia has a lot to learn. She found a real gem with Will.
Watching his pain brought a few tears to my eyes.
“No! I mean what’s going to happen with us?”
“I don’t even know what us is yet.”
Renee writes Will exceptionally well. I have checked out some reviews on Goodreads and I am not the only one with Mia frustration, but we all agree on Will.
Beautiful soul, beautiful man.
* whispers * Just beautiful.
Will kind of finds a muse in Mia. He can express his feelings through his lyrics.
I was getting so upset for him every time Mia crushed him.
“No, this happens when a man’s heart is ripped out of his chest and then kicked around by the people he trusts.”
Over and over.
She was a tease.
“So you led him on again and rejected him and then couldn’t even roll your ass out of bed to say good-bye?”
Will has been relegated to the friend zone. We get repeatedly reminded of this. Will gets repeatedly reminded of this. Bathtub time was a moment where I actually went WT!
Now, if you are doing that in front of your friend... let’s just say I was a little confuzzed at this scene. It felt very random and it didn't make sense to me, considering her 'friend zone' wall.
I give Will full marks for persistence.
Will’s family I loved. He was raised with eleven sisters and a brother. I had never heard of turducken. Ha! I would like to try turducken.
This is a very 3D read because the reader does get to feel. Will does try to get on with his life, but I felt like he was cursed. The poor guy is everything a girl can dream of, but these silly women are treating him so unfairly.
Why?
The guy is a living dream. He loves big.
It’s not roses and white horses, it’s fucking brutal, and it can send a person running for the hills. To love is brave, and Will was the bravest person I knew.
I did enjoy this read. It came with many emotions, much heartache that left me so , so sad for Will. I bled all over the pages for this lad. Every female should be so fortunate to have a Will in their life and appreciate what they have.
Some people are a bit slow to realize what they had all along, but it is the brave few that can learn and change.
I put this book down as my most frustrating read for 2014. Ha! The year is young. My review rating was like a roller coaster ride, dipping and rising as I was reading.
BUT!! I am so ever glad I got to meet Will.
He is a dream book boyfriend.
