Reviewed by girlinthepages on
Now that I've devoured Stay Sweet (pun intended) and fully understand the significance of the secret password, I can fully say that is met almost every expectation I had. I am first and foremost a HUGE dessert person, and I've never met a scoop of ice cream I didn't like. Getting to spend a summer with the Meade Creamery girls and watching them scoop handmade, simple yet irresistible ice cream flavors was like my dream book. And getting to learn about what went into the ice cream process? Maybe I'm strange but I found it SO compelling. I would have given anything to have been a Meade Creamery girl back in high school!
Aside from this book being every ice cream and pastel lover's dream, there was actually a lot of depth to the story. The history behind the stand was fascinating, with Molly Meade, the founder, starting it during WWII as a distraction from her fiancé being overseas fighting the Axis powers and a way to also generate income for her family. Seeing her start a business from the ground up in the war time economy, and also seeing her successfully keep it going after the war was so empowering, and I loved that it was female run and operated for the 6+ decades it had been open! So much female empowerment and entrepreneurship happened in this story which was 100% a message I love to see.
It was also my first time interacting with Siobhan Vivian's writing, and I have to say I was quite impressed. It was told from a third person perspective which I find to be rarer in YA contemporary novels, and had almost a story like quality to it, like someone was telling me a tale rather than me reading it. It was almost dream like in a way? I loved Amelia and identified with her so much, from her desire to always do the right and responsible thing to her innate tendency to care (and sometimes stress) about things rather than just being able to brush them off. I feel like often times these are traits that are seen as negative or something a protagonist needs to overcome, so it was refreshing to see her use these elements of her personality to evoke change and be her own person. There were a lot of friendship feels while I was reading, and while there were times Cate REALLY irritated me (Amelia's blonde BFF who can be found on the back of the cover), I appreciated that their relationship was tested in a real way.
The one thing I could have lived without in this novel was the romance. I feel like it really didn't need it and I would have loved to see the story be more about the ice cream and the business and Amelia finding her place in the company without the romantic build up. It's not the main focus of the story so it was easy enough to tune out (it really felt like it was honestly there for plot convenience to cause trouble between Amelia and the other girls), but I easily could have done without it. Also, while I loved the diary entries from Molly that helped flesh out the founding story of Meade Creamery, I also found the text to be super tiny and hard to read in her handwriting (but that could also just be me getting old! RIP my youthful eyes).
Overall: I ADORED Stay Sweet and definitely always felt the urge to indulge in a scoop while reading because it made me feel like I was right there in the stand with the Meade Creamery girls. I loved the focus on a female founded and run company and also the college vibes as it was set during the summer before the protagonist heads to college. Someone please make the flavor Home Sweet Home a real thing one day!This review was originally posted on Girl in the Pages
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 17 May, 2018: Finished reading
- 17 May, 2018: Reviewed