Sweet Tea and Sympathy: A Book Club Recommendation! (Southern Eclectic, #1)

by Molly Harper

After a spectacular failure at an exclusive event in Chicago, event planner Margot Cary takes a job in Lake Sackett, Georgia. Organizing wakes and fishing trips isn't exactly her thing, but she starts feeling more at home when she catches the eye of the elementary school principal Kyle Archer. A offer for a big-city job means Margot must decide between her career, and a possible new love.

• ISBN10: 1501151223
• ISBN13: 9781501151224
• Publish Date: 21 November 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: The Gallery Press
• Imprint: Gallery Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leigha]

City girl Margot Cary accepts a job with her unfamiliar extended family located in rural Georgia in this funny, if not particularly romantic, comedy.

There is a lot to like about this novel – a smartass and savvy heroine, an adorable and memorable extended family, and cover art that truly depicts the concept of the story. The dialog, particularly between Margot and her extended family, is funny as hell. I absolutely loved the friendships she builds with her cousins Marianne, Frankie, and Duffy. The audiobook narrator did a fantastic job with the various characters.

The romance between Margot and Kyle was rather lacking. While I liked the two together, their romance was the least fleshed out part of the story. Is it realistic a widower with two young children would want to take it slow? Sure, but it’s not all that interesting. It may have hit the target as women’s fiction, but it missed as a romance.

tl;dr While the main character and her extended family are hilarious, the romance was tepid at best.

[EBookObsessed]

I love Molly Harper’s presentation of quirky, small-town life. If you like your small town romance with some fun, but without fur and fangs, here is a Molly Harper series for you.

We got a introduction to some of the main characters in the novella, Save a Truck, Ride a Redneck, which came out at the end of 2017 which explained how the McCready Family Funeral Home and a Bait Shop came to be in the same place.

The property has been owned by the McCready family for generations. (The ebook has a family history breakdown for ease of reference.)

The main character, Margot Cary, is the daughter who was taken away from the McCready family when her mother moved her to Chicago and remarried when Margot was just a toddler. In the prior novella, we hear about Uncle Stan whose wife and daughter left him years ago because of his drinking.

Margot is a very successful event planner until one disasterous event takes Margot from future partner to unemployed before you can say “shrimp tower.” Especially when seaching YouTube for flamingo fails gets your video 100K hits. Margot is about to lose her apartment and shockingly, no one is taking her job requests seriously. Things can’t get worse when she gets a call from her previously known Aunt Tootie offering her a job, medical benefits and a place to live. Only problem is that Margot needs to move to some place called Lake Sackett, Georgia. With no other opportunities, Margot takes the leap, if only temporary, to meet her family.

While Margot keeps informing everyone that her move to Lake Sackett is temporary, but with no real friends or family to miss in her old life, the fun she is having getting to know her cousins and the laid-back lifestyle by the lake are slowly getting under Margot’s skin. Until she, again reluctantly, agrees to help with the big Founders Day event which is coming up. The lake’s level is at an all-time low and the small town has lost a lot of their much needed summertime vacationers. The small businesses are starting to suffer all over town so guilt wins out over Margot’s desire to beat feet out of town.

Of course, there is romance to be found in any good Molly Harper novel. I really enjoyed first having Margot meet Kyle, a man at first look appears to Margot to be a brooding lumberjack. And after a few glasses of moonshine while out with her cousins, Margot ends up in a make-out session with her lumberjack, who is suddenly not so brooding as he is hot, which comes to an abrupt halt when Margot’s alcohol-fogged brain comes to realize she might just be making out with an unknown cousin and skedaddles. She is happy to find out that there is no family relationship between them but even more surprised to find out that Kyle is less lumberjack and more school principal.

At the start of the story, Kyle and Margot are fun, flirty and sexy. After we find out that hot Kyle is actually daddy Kyle with two little girls, things start to get awkward between them. Although Kyle wife’s died five years ago, he gets very awkward with Margot, especially around his girls. I understand the principal of not wanting to introduce your kids to many women who come and go from your life, but it got so uncomfortable especially in a scene where his deceased wife’s parents show up at the house and Kyle scoots Margot out of the house like he was caught naked and having an affair while his wife is on her deathbed. His wife is dead five years and he lives like a monk. It isn’t so horrible to spend time with a nice woman.

I would have enjoyed the romance a bit more it is just flowed naturally without them trying to avoid labeling it and without Margot screaming that she was leaving town anytime she spent a few minutes with Kyle and his girls and Kyle then acting like spending time with Margot was a dirty secret. In the parts where the uncomfortable feelings were turned down, Kyle and Margot had magic and you could see why he let her in while not finding anyone interesting enough in the years since his wife’s death. I mean, hot, employed, non-related man in a small town would normally draw a lot of attention. It became a little wearisome when all the later nice moments between Kyle and Margot get jerked to an abrupt halt whenever things started turning sweet.

I am looking forward to the next story which features cousin Frankie who stepped up as mortician for the family. She has her own unique style and sense of humor and I hope her sunny disposition stays upbeat in the next novel against the grumpy, new sheriff in town.

See more at EBookObsessed.com

[Berls]

I really enjoyed Sweet Tea and sympathy! It was different, to me, than a lot of Molly Harper reads - but in a good way. Still plenty of humor and small town hijinks, but it also felt somehow deeper to me. You've got our main character, Margot Carey, who starts the story off in typical Harper fashion - an party snafu involving flamingos that will leave you laughing so hard you cry. But it leads her down the road of desperation and reuniting with her long lost Georgia relatives and blundering through a strained relationship with her absentee, alcoholic father. That relationship dynamic, along with all the new family, went a bit deeper than I expect from a Harper book. And then, she meets this handsome lumberjack of a guy and... Again this is where dependable Harper (sexiness and hilarity combined) meets the unexpected. I don't want to spoil things, but that relationship has elements to it that were deeper than usual (but also allowed for some funny moments). I really enjoyed this one a lot and hope there are more to come from this small town! As always, Amanda Ronconi's narration was fantastic! I can't imagine not listening to a Harper book narrated by Ronconi!

[Nany]

It was a good story but the romance was awful.

[MurderByDeath]

Molly Harper's writing makes me laugh, but I remember when I read her first Half-Moon Hollow book Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs, it took me a good part of the book to care about the MC, Jane; the book just started off slow and bumpy for me.   Sweet Tea and Sympathy was the same; I just wasn't feeling it for the first half of the book and I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to care about Margot or her very odd dynamic with Kyle.  But things started to click about halfway through.  The snappy dialog that Harper is so good at kicked in, especially when Margot was with her cousins, and her interaction with the book's 'villain', Sarah Lee, was satisfyingly catty without being too catty.  After that midway point all the disparate pieces of the story started to come together, and more importantly, Margot became a sympathetic protagonist.  I started to care about what happened to her and even though I really struggled to figure out the clunky progression of her romance with Kyle, I found myself sold on them by the end.   This is the first in a new series and, frankly, not Molly Harper at her finest, but it was a light, enjoyable read.  I have every reason to believe future books will only get better as Harper finds her groove in this tiny eclectic Southern town.   This book could work for either   Pancha Ganapati: Read anything involving a need for forgiveness in the story line; a story about redemption  (Margot's reunion with her estranged father, a recovering alcoholic whom she's never met, is a big part of the story), or  Thanksgiving Day: Books with a theme of coming together to help a community or family in need.  The town of Lake Sackett is dying after an accident at the dam creating the lake emptied out a significant amount of the lake's water, making the effects of an ongoing drought more devastating to the tourist trade that keeps most of the town afloat (pun intended).  Their last hope is a week long founder's day celebration that's headed for disaster until Margot steps in to help.

[kimbacaffeinate]

We first meet Margot Cary at the height of her career as an elite event planner in Chicago where everything goes spectacularly wrong. With a tarnished reputation and at the end of her lease Margot accepts an offer of employment from her estranged father's family the McCready's.

The McCready family owns a Funeral Home and Bait Shop located on the shore of Lake Sackett. The tale delivered a delightful tale as Margot gets to know the family she and her mother left behind. As her father tries to rebuild their relationship, Margot soon finds herself spending time with her cousins, helping out the elementary school and finding herself attracted to the school principal Kyle Archer.

I had to laugh at the family run business and stories emerging from it. Harper provided its history, and it made perfect sense! I enjoyed the McCready family from the cousins to the dog loving Aunt. Margot has some issues with her Dad, and it takes her a little while to shake off the city in her. In the meantime, Harper welcomed us to the town, introduced us to the locals and shared PTA drama. Harper understands small-town politics and their inner workings making the setting and characters feel genuine.

We are treated to a subtle, realistic romance that is served on the side as Margot comes into her own, makes career decisions and tries to find her slice of happy. Harper allows the reader to experience an array of emotions from laughter at one-line zingers to emotional moments that had me completely caught up in its thread. The characters are unique and we meet a rather large cast of them.  You will adore the McCready family as they open their arms wide and welcome Margot. They were authentic and loved each other flaws and all.

If you love small-town tales featuring family, character growth, humor and heart with a dash of romance, then grab a tall glass of sweet tea and enjoy SWEET TEA AND SYMPATHY.

Copy provided by the publisher. This review was originally posted at Caffeinated Reviewer