Day 3 - #31DDD: Tell Me about your Grandfather

photo courtesy of Anson Mills

The funny thing about this post that is in telling you about my grandfather, I'm really going to tell you about my grandmother, considering, I didn't know my grandfather very well (he died when I was very young).  I don't know who my paternal grandfather is...and that's a post on a totally different blog.

My grandfather (or rather, my grandmother's first husband...because she had at least two, that I'm aware of), was a bastard...and he didn't last long before he met with the kind of justice that anyman who hits a woman should.

According to my grandmother, my grandfather had made his physical dislike of something she had done known and had then gone to take a nap.  Now she, being a good southern girl and full of piss and vinegar, put a pot on the stove an prepared my favorite breakfast treat: grits.  When they were done, she took the pot off the stove, carried it into her bedroom and promptly dumped the entire pot onto the face of her sleeping husband.

I'm told he never hit her again.

Review – Sweet as Sin by Inez Kelley

I have tried write this review without emoting into the likes of fangirl squeeing of epic proportions…and I have failed.

Prepare for the squeeing fangirly madness.

But first, a brief synopsis.

Sweet as Sin by Inez Kelley brings us John Murphy, kids author and Livvy Andrews, baker. The two mix it up in what is supposed to be a steamy summer affair. Amidst the romps in the hot tub, discovering a use of casting sugar that it wasn't intended for and pages upon pages of his latest book, John and Livvy discover love. Unfortunately for John and Livvy this is not a love that is soft or easy to tumble into.

Now the fangirling…

I have no idea how I have not heard of this author. I read this book in two days, put it down and then reread it three more times before I fully accepted that it was exactly as I read it.

There are only three authors I reread that much…THREE. And with one book Inez Kelley became number four. She pulled into her writing such humanity that I cried and feared for John's sanity in each reread. I kept expecting the end to somehow alter despite what I knew awaited me with The End.

I applaud Ms. Kelley for putting such emotion into the spoken word. She made the feelings of her characters palpable. I felt each bit of fury and anguish that Livvy felt when reading about John's past. I worried how John's YA story would turn out (and for the record, if she could please write this series for the kiddies I would appreciate, kthnxbai) and I even became entrenched in the many side stories that existed.

But in the end I returned to John and Livvy's story that had so many layers as to enrapture any reader.

One of my favorite things about reading is how the gooseflesh rises on my or when that shock of tears burns behind your eyes that you can't hold back, but you're so full that there is nowhere for those tears to go, so they spill over your cheeks. This book pulled those emotions from me and kept asking for them the more I read. Kelley didn't try to soften the blow of how love is for the readers, John needed to be loved hard, because, "love doesn't shy away from fear. It erases it."

This is why I read romance and erotica, because the authors get it, they know that the many sides of love can be put on paper and can be shown to all. I praise this writing and welcome any and all to not read it and grip the cover a little harder in the emotion that evokes.