Title: Bittersweet Series: True North #1
Author: Sarina Bowen
Published: June 14, 2016
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 348
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:The last person Griffin Shipley expects to find stuck in a ditch on his Vermont country road is his ex-hookup. Five years ago they’d shared a couple of steamy nights together. But that was a lifetime ago.
At twenty-seven, Griff is now the accidental patriarch of his family farm. Even his enormous shoulders feel the strain of supporting his mother, three siblings and a dotty grandfather. He doesn’t have time for the sorority girl who’s shown up expecting to buy his harvest at half price.
Vermont was never in Audrey Kidder’s travel plans. Neither was Griff Shipley. But she needs a second chance with the restaurant conglomerate employing her. Okay—a fifth chance. And no self-righteous lumbersexual farmer will stand in her way.
They’re adversaries. They want entirely different things from life. Too bad their sexual chemistry is as hot as Audrey’s top secret enchilada sauce, and then some.
Sarina Bowen’s Bittersweet is a pitch-perfect “small town romance” featuring a grumpy orchardist and a wildchild aspiring chef, set during apple season in Vermont. The romance between them is sweet, steamy, and mostly uncomplicated—no overdramatic Big Misunderstanding for Griff and Audrey! The story manages to hit emotional, authentic beats without every verging on angst. A great, lighthearted love story with a note of realism. I enjoyed this book without reservations.
The story is this:
(1) Audrey was born to glass-ceiling crushing single mother who hates men; the expectations piled upon her were unrealistic and soul-crushing. After flunking out of two colleges, she went to culinary school and started on the road to becoming a star chef. Problem is, she’s still that same little girl, hungering for her emotionally distant mother’s approval.
(2) Griff had dreams of playing NFL, but after his dad died, he had to come home and support his family. He’s really into organic farming, but he’s tired of living harvest-to-harvest, one step away from bankruptcy.
(3) Audrey comes to town, and Griff knows this is his shot with the girl he wanted to date back in college. They bond over Star Wars references and cider-pressing. Griff’s big, messy family falls in love with Audrey as well, and she finally feels like she has a support system and people who genuinely care about her.
(4) Problem? In the real world, you can’t just fall in love and waltz off into the sunset. Shit happens.
Now, it’s no secret that this is generally a subgenre of romance that I love. I’m not saying I’m an expert on the small town contemporary, but I will say that when I’m in the mood for romance, that’s where my heart turns first. Unfortunately, small town romance is…honestly one of the more problematic segments of Romancelandia as a whole. It’s a genre that is generally written by middle-aged white women with a middle-aged white female audience in mind. When I read a small town romance, I know that, invariably, I will be dealing with casual slut-shaming, racism, homophobia, and a too-perfect image of happy, beautiful cis white people starting immediately successful businesses in tiny towns. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the bar for small town romances is so low.
Compare that to Bittersweet. Yes, the protagonist, Griff, is an organic orchard-keeper and has a beard; yes, every single person in the book appears to be white; yes, the book is stuffed full of cutesy things people love about the subgenre: big family dinners, nosy neighbors, cute barnyard animals—but the tone is entirely different. Sarina Bowen doesn’t shy away from showing the “seedy underbelly” (AKA realism) of life in small town USA. Stagnant local economies, predatory capitalists from big cities, drug abuse, poor infrastructures, aging populations with little government support. It’s all there. Does the author bang readers over the head with it? No, certainly not. But the authenticity of the setting is woven into every nuance of the plot, working silently to counteract the overly sunshiney worlds of other authors.
And against this more low-key, evenhanded portrayal of a small town, we have Griff and Audrey. I suppose you could call Bittersweet a second chance romance—they hooked up a couple of times in college, but due to some misunderstandings, never got to go out on a date. The feelings were there, but the ball never got rolling. When Audrey accidentally drives into a ditch on Griff’s property, both take it as it comes.
Like I said at the beginning of this review: Bittersweet is not a romance that’s high on conflict between the two leads. The obstacles between them and their happily ever after come from the outside—Audrey has a job in Boston that she’s not willing to put aside for a man; Griff is single-handedly supporting his family with his farm and his no time for outside stuff. The feelings between them grow naturally and realistically, but as Audrey notes to herself at some point: love alone just isn’t enough to sustain a long-term relationship in the real world.
(If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.)
Overall, Bittersweet perfectly achieves what I love about romances: palpable chemistry between the protagonists, a believable progression to long-term commitment, real-world hurdles the couple must jump together, and interesting side characters that don’t steal the show. And on a lighter note: I recommend this book to anyone who loves the idea of the heroine sitting on the bearded hero’s face. It was hella hot.
