Sweet…But Unsatisfying
Now listen up, everyone: Ms. D. loves her sweets. Period. I eat something sweet after EVERY meal. Sometimes FOR the meal. But this book, The Sweet In Between by Sheri Reynolds, left me ultimately…blah. I guess that is the best word for it, even if it is pretty nondescript. The book is about a girl named Kendra (she goes by Kenny) who lives with her father’s girlfriend and the children/grandchild of that girlfriend. Her father is in federal prison on drug charges. Kenny lives an unbalanced life–she is struggling coming to grips with what her father has done and where he is, trying to feel secure in the household where she does live by doing “extra” chores to make herself needed, and also coming to terms with her own sexuality. To top it off, at the beginning of the book, a girl is killed in the opposite side of the duplex in which Kenny lives by Kenny’s creepy neighbor because he thought she was breaking in when really she thought it was the duplex she and her friends had rented for a vacation.
The story is told in Kenny’s point of view, and it’s a fairly quick read because it is broken into short sections that don’t require intense concentration. Kenny’s voice feels authentic…most of the time. However, I was just generally unimpressed. It might be because this same author wrote The Rapture of Canaan, a book I much preferred over this one. I don’t know. It was a quick read; it covered some serious issues (Kenny is hiding some serious secrets from her early years of living with the family), but I’m not feeling the urge to pick up another of Reynolds’ books anytime soon. 
