Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas

Rating: 3 1/2

When Liberty Jones and her mother are left alone after the death of Liberty's father in an oil rigging accident, they uproot and move to a trailer park in the small town of Welcome, Texas. As they build a new life there and deal with daily struggles of a low income family, Liberty makes some new friends, both young and old, and develops a young love for her neighbor, Hardy Cates. Though Hardy comes to love Liberty also, he has big plans and big dreams, and he refuses to allow his feelings for her to keep him in the small town.

Soon after Hardy leaves town, Libery's life crumbles around her when her mother dies unexpectedly, leaving her baby sister to her young care. Liberty uses the opportunity to pursue her own dreams of becoming a hair stylist.

Review: I LOVE Lisa Kleypas. But I did not love this book. It pains me, because I thought I would love it. I think it was a little too much like chick-lit for my personal taste, and that may have been the problem for me. The story seemed to dwell a long time on her childhood. I kept waiting for it to jump ahead at some point, but it rarely jumped more than a year or so at a time. I never loved Liberty as a person, but I liked her well enough. In fact, this book was a 4 for me until close to the end of the book. I LOVED Gage. I thought he was fantastic. But when Hardy showed back up and tried to steal Liberty back, I was frankly appalled at how wishy-washy Liberty was about which guy she wanted. I really lost a huge amount of respect for her because of the way she handled the situation. I thought Gage deserved better, and frankly I wouldn't have blamed him if he had dumped her. I even wondered if she would have ultimately chosen Hardy if he had not betrayed her.... Anyway, I will keep reading her contemporaries, but my heart will always be with Lisa's historicals.