Tag: Lissa Reed

REVIEW: Absolutely, Almost Perfect by Lissa Reed

alysiaconstantineLeave a comment
Absolutely Almost Perfect by Lissa Reed (August 3. 2017); 256 pages. Available from Interlude Press here.
 
The third book of Reed’s charming Sucre Couer series, Absolutely Almost Perfect returns to the love story of Alex Scheff, a nervous and acerbic American photographer, and Craig Oliver, a level-headed British ex-pat baker, though this installment leaves behind all the previous settings (the Sucre Couer bakery, Seattle) for the Oliver household in England when Craig brings Alex home to meet his family and celebrate the wedding of his brother.
 
But things, as they often will do when family is involved, do not go perfectly. (You know this; the title hints at this.) To start with, Alex must deal with meeting the family of his love. Anyone who has done this knows how terrifying it can be—probably more so when visiting that family also means having to navigate a foreign culture. Plus, Craig’s very attractive ex is floating around, still in the family’s good graces, and Alex is going to have to contend with meeting him, too. But wait, there’s more! Craig gets along with all his family (his feisty mother, his steadfast father, even the younger twin girls who, like most teenagers, are, well teenagers) with the glaring exception of his oblivious-to-mean-spirited prankster older brother. They’ve had a contentious, bitter relationship since Craig was born, one that has only gotten worse with time.
 
To top it all off, there’s a wedding in the mix, with all the stress and family weirdness that tends to bring on.
 
As I began by saying, the books in this series are charming. The characters—especially, but not only, Alex and Craig—are completely realized and so well-drawn I feel as though I know what they’ll say and do next (I usually don’t, but the feeling itself is significant to me). Craig himself is charming (Alex more closely harmonizes with my taste for the acerbic and sweetly bitter—being a native of the US East Coast will make a person distrustful of the effusiveness or polite restraint preferred in other regions… put that way, I now see that our taste in coffee (strong to the point of bitterness) reflects our social tastes as well).
 
Great characters aside, what really grabs one about this book is the plot—once I started, I was heroin-level hooked by the drama and urgency of the goings-on. At the heart of this book is love, with dose of reconciliation. Though Alex and Craig are certainly the center of gravity here, it is how a family comes to fit together that matters: anger, jealousy, forgiveness, joy, care and protectiveness all wrap around them and sometimes, as it often is, it’s an ill fit, but it still manages to hold.
 
Advertisement

REVIEW: Certainly, Possibly You by Lissa Reed

alysiaconstantineLeave a comment

Certainly, Possibly You by Lissa Reed (September 22, 2016); 324 pages. Available from Interlude Press here.

Certainly, Possibly You is the second book in Lissa Reed’s Sucre Coeur series, which revolves around the lives of the folks who work at the Sucre Coeur bakery. While Definitely, Maybe Yours focused on the get-together of bakery manager and debonair British feller Craig Oliver with photographer Alex Scheff (a friend of-friend-of- guy), Certainly tells the story of bakery assistant Sarita (who’s friends with Craig) and ballroom dancer Maritza (who’s friends with Alex).

Maritza’s on her way up the dancy-pants ladder; she and her partner Nicky have made a name for themselves on the dancy-pants circuit. Sarita is an Amy Winehouse-haired graduate student trying to get somewhere, too. Both women are working in the service industry (Sarita at the bakery, Maritza as a waitress at a meatball-and-sauce joint) in Seattle when they’re introduced to each other at Alex’s studio party. The novel begins when Sarita wakes up hung over and surprised to find Maritza wearing Sarita’s T-shirt and little else. Though they have a bit of a rocky start, they do wind up starting something real with each other and it’s lovely.

Trouble is, of course, right there waiting. While Sarita’s brother Devesh and his husband Sunil are supportive, Sarita’s sister Anjali is a homophobic jerk, and her parents announce that they’re leaving the country (but not because of Anjali—I realize how that sounded). Maritza, for her part, must struggle with her nasty (and rather homophobic) dance partner/ex-lover Nicky, who turns out to be a vain, moustache-twirling villain who tries to wreck everything that’s blooming. (Which makes me giggle, thinking of him in shiny spandex dance pants and an unbuttoned satin shirt, machinating.) There’s missed connections, attempted blackmail, chiffon and muffins, all leading up to the moment when a huge opportunity for Maritza also brings the threat of distance to the new relationship between Maritza and Sarita.

There’s lots to like here: the characters are all believable and complex, just stubborn enough to be interesting but still real. There are enough missed connections and difficult communications to lay a great backdrop of dramatic tension. There are likeable characters for whom you want to root and there’s dancing and food. And there are (at least in mention) teacup Dobermans. (Dobermen?)

The jerks here (especially Anjali) have real motivation and aren’t just cardboard cutout antagonists and senseless homphobes. The good folks aren’t be-haloed innocents, either. Everybody gets a story and a complex inner life.  There’s even a recipe for baked goods at the back of the book.

I do have one very strong criticism and word of warning to readers: my copy did not come with a cookie, and I feel that a book series which revolves around the lives of people who work in a bakery should most definitely include a cookie.