Review of Stay Sweet

I swear I saw this pitched somewhere as Mystic Ice Cream (well, as Mystic Pizza with ice cream – you know, a coming of age story about working at an ice cream shop over the summer.) In any case, what did I think about this book about life and love and ice cream? Check out my Review of Stay Sweet!

Stay Sweet by Siobhan Vivian

To be published on April 24, 2018 by Simon and Schuster

Source: thanks so much to the publisher for sending an ARC on my request 🙂

Synopsis from Goodreads: Summer in Sand Lake isn’t complete without a trip to Meade Creamery—the local ice cream stand founded in 1944 by Molly Meade who started making ice cream to cheer up her lovesick girlfriends while all the boys were away at war.

Since then, the stand has been owned and managed exclusively by local girls, who inevitably become the best of friends. Seventeen-year-old Amelia and her best friend Cate have worked at the stand every summer for the past three years, and Amelia is “Head Girl” at the stand this summer.

When Molly passes away before Amelia even has her first day in charge, Amelia isn’t sure that the stand can go on. That is, until Molly’s grandnephew Grady arrives and asks Amelia to stay on to help continue the business…but Grady’s got some changes in mind…

Review of Stay Sweet

After reading the blurb, I went into with finely honed rom-com expectations about exactly what would happen. I loved that Stay Sweet was able to deliver the sweet story I expected and also really surprise me.

What I loved:

The story within a story. I’ll be honest: this narrative technique isn’t always my favorite. It has risks – that the reader will prefer one story to another. But I really loved both Molly’s story about a fiancé who goes missing during WWII and Amelia’s story of becoming Head Girl, just to have the proverbial rug pulled out from under her.

The girl power. On the surface, this feels like a pretty conventional story. Molly grew up in a different era, a time when a soldier went to war with a photo of his sweetheart, whose job it was to wait patiently at home.

And even Amelia’s contemporary world feels a little retro, with a gaggle of girls scooping ice cream wearing pink polos. But by the end, I felt that the story showed women being strong and independent in more subtle ways.

The accurate portrayal of a certain type of female friendship. Of course I love reading about true-blue BFFs, but realistically, those are few and far between. Amelia and Cate have one of those tricky friendships. They have very different personalities – Amelia is dutiful and organized, while Cate is more breezy and reckless.

They were both up for Head Girl at the ice cream stand, and while Cate seems supportive of Amelia, the story shows all the ways she subtly undermines her. I recently had a long conversation with someone about a friendship like this – whether it’s better to accept someone’s strengths and weaknesses, or confront them, or just drop them. I don’t want to spoil what happens here, but I really thought this was an interesting – and realistic – relationship.

A romance that wasn’t what I expected. I liked that Grady was a fully-developed character with his own issues. And I appreciated that romance wasn’t the main focus of this story. This is a slowly developing relationship, and one that felt nuanced and realistic.

The ice cream. I’m a huge Food Network nerd, so I really loved the scenes about ice cream making. I could have read about ice cream churning and tasting and testing all day long. If there is a Home Sweet Home ice cream out there, I need to try it ASAP!

If you’re a fan of Mystic Pizza, or of ice cream, or of rom-com type stories that surprise you, I definitely recommend that you check out Stay Sweet!