The Sweet Spot By Amy Poeppel (Review by Stacie Kitchen)

Rating: 5/5

The Sweet Spot is a heartwarming, hilarious novel about a group of New Yorkers whose lives intertwine. Almost each chapter is told from a different person’s perspective, but the story features four main women. Lauren, an artist, lives with her family in a 70s style Brownstown above a bar. Evelyn, Lauren’s mother, moves in with her daughter’s family when they begin to need to help with the children. Melinda, a recent divorcee, is plotting revenge on her cheating ex-husband while also starting a new job at an elementary school. Finally, Olivia is a young adult navigating finding her true passion, when her sudden job loss forces her to find new employment. These women have almost nothing in common, yet when their lives intersect, they form a very unconventional bond.

There are some very witty moments in this book, and it was full of humorous banter. The youngest child, Waverly, has some of the best one-liners. It just catches you off guard and puts a smile to your face. The humor reminds me a bit of the The Thursday Murder Club or Finlay Donavan books. I also felt some major Modern Family vibes from this book. The individuality of each character was very strong and produced some laugh-out-loud moments. Even though not all the characters were immediately likeable (ahem Melinda, Felicity, and Russell), hearing the story from their perspectives helped open a new way of looking at them.

I was a surprised at the contents of the story based on the cover. The cover to me felt like I would be reading a bubbly, almost sickly-sweet romance. Instead, it had a lot of depth. Sure, the quirky, chaotic family of Lauren and Leo, and the revenge agenda of Melinda added a lot of humor, but the storyline touched on a lot of tough subjects. Despite being a little longer in length for this type of story (probably could’ve been made into two books), the story really captured my interest, and I was immersed from beginning to end. Great, funny, happy read!