Review: The Sweetest Thing

The Sweetest Thing, by Christina Mandelski. The GoodReads summary:

In the world of Sheridan Wells, life is perfect when she’s decorating a cake. Unfortunately, everything else is a complete mess: her mom ran off years ago, her dad is more interested in his restaurant, and the idea of a boyfriend is laughable.

But Sheridan is convinced finding her mom will solve all her problems--only her dad’s about to get a cooking show in New York, which means her dream of a perfect family will be dashed.

Here’s the thing--it was kinda hard for me to concentrate on the things that I liked about this book, because Sheridan annoyed me SO much. She’s honestly one of the most self-absorbed main characters that I’ve seen. She never thinks about anyone other than herself . . . ever. It’s always me, me, me. Yes, her life has challenges--her mom abandoned her and her dad wants to move away from the town where Sheridan grew up, but seriously, Sheridan never once tries to see anything from anyone else’s perspective--she doesn’t realize that other people have struggles too. She made me want to scream.

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten that bit of whininess out of my system, I’ll move on to other, more positive things. I generally liked the other characters. Her grandma is pretty great, even though everything out of her mouth is a Texas cliché. It took me a little while to understand Sheridan’s dad and why he was acting the way he was, but once I did, I liked him a lot. He makes some mistakes, but it’s clear that he really loves Sheridan. Jack, Sheridan’s best friend, felt a little flat to me, but he was sweet and a good friend, so it didn’t bug me too much. I really liked that Ethan, the boy Sheridan starts dating, isn’t automatically a jerk just because he’s popular--he has some jerk-ish qualities but he has some good ones too.

I loved the whole bakery/restaurant thing the book had going on. It made me so hungry while I was reading. And I like that Sheridan decorates cakes. I feel like, for some reason, not many YA characters have hobbies, but Sheridan does, and she totally rocks at it.

Overall, I think that if I could overlook Sheridan’s selfishness, I would’ve thought it was a cute book that does a pretty good job at dealing with family dynamics. But . . . I really cannot get over my dislike of Sheridan, so I probably won’t ever be re-reading this one. I’d read something else by the same author though.