A Sweet Mess
by Jayci Lee
3 Stars
Imagine From: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51164758-a-sweet-mess?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Rtzm5Ow0Ut&rank=1
Aubrey is a small town baker who has quit a reputation with her regulars. Landon is a big time restaurant reviewer. A chance encounter finds the two in each other's orbits, and the two really hit it off. However, without knowing this fascinating girl was a baker, Landon writes a scathing review of Aubrey's bakery when he accidentally gets a cake meant for a 6 year old's birthday party. Putting Aubrey's bakery at risk she struggles with an expansion among the now dwindling orders. Trying to make things right after realizing his mistake Landon offers Aubrey an opportunity of a life time. She can present two recipes on his friends cooking show helping to promote her bakery while paying her generously for her work to finish her expansion. The two find themselves falling back into each other while both struggling with taking a leap that could ruin their careers. The story itself was sweet, but it was also a bit of a mess. The pacing was off, and made it difficult to get into the story. I normally am ok with large time jumps in a story but there were quite a few in a book only 306 pages long. This made the story feel disconnected in a way. Especially because the behavior of these characters was slightly different after each time jump. Although people do grow and change it felt as though I was reading about new characters each jump, and the jumps could have been made more clear with a chapter heading saying "1 month later" so we knew what was coming. The story also seemed to drag out in the middle only to be summed up in a few pages which led to another time jump. These two characters who had trust issues the entire book seemed to get over them in a short conversation which felt unreal and took away from the story. Especially when Aubrey turned to Landon and said "You have much to learn Grasshopper" when it was totally not anything she would ever say. Overall an enjoyable read, I'm looking forward to reading more by the author in the future. Spoiler! I also feel the random pregnancy to push the plot along was unnecessary. Accidental pregnancies do happen of course but this one felt as though it was pushed into the story just so it could have a specific ending.
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