Sweet Tea and Sympathy (Southern Eclectic, #1)

by Molly Harper

[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.

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