Review: Sweet Thing

Sweet Thing by Renee Carlino
Series: Sweet Thing (#1)
Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Mia Kelly thinks she has it all figured out. She’s an Ivy League graduate, a classically trained pianist, and the beloved daughter of a sensible mother and offbeat father. Yet Mia has been stalling since graduation, torn between putting her business degree to use and exploring music, her true love.

When her father unexpectedly dies, she decides to pick up the threads of his life while she figures out her own. Uprooting herself from Ann Arbor to New York City, Mia takes over her father’s café, a treasured neighborhood institution that plays host to undiscovered musicians and artists. She’s denied herself the thrilling and unpredictable life of a musician, but a chance encounter with Will, a sweet, gorgeous, and charming guitarist, offers her a glimpse of what could be. When Will becomes her friend and then her roommate, she does everything in her power to suppress her passions-for him, for music-but her father’s legacy slowly opens her heart to the possibility of something more.

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Dear God, where to even start?

I suppose at the beginning.

I was immediately drawn in by the prologue. It’s told from the perspective of a mother in an airport. She’s also a writer and daydreaming about how she would describe the people around her. One of them is Mia, our main character. The writer’s musings on what life advice she would give to our MC really struck me and her thoughts on wisdom and knowledge and the difference between the two were downright quotable. It was an interesting and unique way to introduce an MC. I wish the writer had taken Mia by the shoulders, shaken her until her brain unscrambled and imparted every grain of advice she could think of so this entire debacle could have been avoided.

Mia, oh Mia. I’m not really sure where to even start with her. She’s a woman in transition. Her entire life has been turned upside down by the death of her father and she has no idea what she’s doing or what she wants to do. One thing she does “know” is what she wants in a man: “…stable, wealthy, business minded…” That’s it. That’s her list. I immediately began to add things to it that should be more important like faithful, loyal, knows where a clitoris is, etc etc.

And so began my struggle with her. You see, she clung to this ideal with a fervor that smacked of madness. But I’ll get to that momentarily.

Mia finds herself in New York City as the new owner of an old coffee shop that was once a sort of Mecca for beatniks. She’s living in the apartment she also inherited from her father and when she finds herself in need of a roommate she word-vomits the offer to Will, the musician she met on her flight to the city.

Will, oh, Will. He was the only reason I didn’t DNF this when Mia’s antics became unbearable. It’s like he somehow managed to hold onto the childlike wonder that most of us lost while growing up in the harsh face of reality. I absolutely loved him.

He’s eccentric like some true artists can be. He randomly grabs people’s faces and kisses them full on the mouth when happy. He can’t keep track of all his nieces and nephews and so calls them characteristics like “freckles” and “dimples” instead of their names. He touches people on the nose and says “Boop” for no reason and sometimes gives totally unexpected answers to questions.

He plays the guitar because he loves to. Not for the chicks, not for the fame but because he’s just so over the moon about music. He has no brain to mouth filter…in a fantastic and sometimes hilarious way. He’s so easy going and charismatic that people just want to be around him. He can talk to anyone, switch into story teller mode or just listen if that’s what someone needs, not wait until it’s his turn to talk, listen.

Begs the question…what the fuck is wrong with Mia??? Who wouldn’t want to date that? I would. In fact, I’m engaged to someone a lot like him, which might be why it irked me so much to see such a free spirit treated like absolute shit.

Mia is quite obviously attracted to Will, they share similar tastes in music, personality and general outlook but she suppresses her feelings and declares them to be “just friends” and then dates a man that fits her “ideal” instead.

Meet Robert, aka, Robby. Dane Cook, one of my favorite comedians, has this theory that all men with names that end in some sort of Obby are doucebags. This character does nothing but reaffirm his hypothesis. He’s the VP at JP Morgan and when she finds this out you can practically see the dollar signs in her eyes. Their interactions were not only painful to observe but at times infuriating. Point in case, when they meet he shamelessly OGGLES her in front of his four year old son.

They don’t have similar tastes in…anything, he’s more concerned with image than reality, is belittling, has a delicate man-ego and is a FUCKING SKEEZE. Oh, and when he calls to ask her out on their first date it’s at her coffee shop because he lost her goddamn phone number. Twice. AND SHE STILL GOES OUT WITH HIM.

Not only that but he’s constantly doing things that irk her. But she keeps seeing him! Do you wanna know why? Do ya? Are you sure???

Because, and I fucking quote:

“I decided to overlook his little blunder and focus on the fact that he was a good-looking, successful guy…”

Oh and FYI…

*SPOILER ALERT*

…she sleeps with the fucking douchecopter.

At this point I hate-morphed into a giant scaly ragebeast, jumped into the book, ENDED her and ran off with Will.

*sigh*

Okay fine. No I didn’t.

But I wanted to. Many, many times. Because Mia is hypocritical. And comically childish. She’s also incredibly judgmental. Her continuous unfair and inaccurate judgments of Will had me seething. It got so bad that I skimmed a large majority of this book which is probably good for anyone reading this otherwise it might be fifteen pages of f-bombs, angry memes and enraged ranting.

Even the ending couldn’t keep me from flat out hating Mia. She passes the point of acceptable confusion early on and then enters the lands of the insane.

She even manages to turn Will into an angry person at one point and then later she breaks his fucking heart. Through three quarters of this book I wanted to cunt punt her.

My one complaint about Will is that he forgave her over and over again. She treated him like garbage, absolute fucking garbage and I hope to God men like him in real life are smart enough to know when to run in the opposite direction from the Mia’s of the world.

Here’s a helpful flyer to pass out to all your male friends so that they can avoid train wrecks like this chick: