“I'm a huge fan of Susan Elizabeth Phillips but it took me three attempts to get past the first chapter of Ain't She Sweet. The heroine is not instantly likeable although it was obvious she was going to make an impact. I think perhaps it was the realisation of just how much she was going to have to go through to make it to her hea that held me back.
Last week, celebrating the acceptance of my own latest book, I finally sat down with Ain't She Sweet and read it in two huge gulps. The heroine, Sugar, who had been Home Coming queen and leader of her generation at school, had tormented - horribly - a girl unable to fight back, ruined the career of her English teacher and dumped her sweetheart to run off with a football player. Broke, desperate, and with three marriages behind her she returns home in search of painting that may or may not exist, that will restore her fortune. The English teacher -- a wonderful English hero called Colin -- now owns her family home and the girl whose life she spent her childhood ruining, is now the town's leading light -- oh, and she married Sugar's sweetheart.
Sugar is put through every shade of indignity and humiliation by the people she hurt. She's forced to work as Colin's housekeeper, serve the women she humiliated and let down, work for the daughter of her mother's black housekeeper. But she's a trooper and her courage reduces Colin admiration.
But this story isn't just about Sugar's redemption. A lot of people find their way in this book and the scene with the water sprinkler had me screaming with laughter.
Loved it, loved it, loved it!”