Another trip down memory lane for our snarky sisters. Join us for this episode where we re-visit the book The Sugar Rose by Susan Carroll, which we both remember loving as a young adult woman but which fell flat when reading it as a mature, adult woman with some experience and perspective.
As always, we contemplate some very serious questions like. . .
What is with these avant-garde names in these books? Everard and Aurelia, seriously? You are predisposing me to mispronounce the hero's name throughout this book. What ever happened to good ole Edward . . . or John. . . or Elizabeth?
Also, what is the hero's problem with taking a loan from friends or family to keep him out of prison? Your pride will make a very cold bedfellow in debtor's prison dude.
Finally, this book hits a new low with the introduction of a rice and vinegar diet for the heroine. Are you kidding me? Was that the Regency period equivalent of the rice cakes and Diet Rite craze of the 1980's?
We also feel it is important to point out that there are three tropes author's use when handling a plump character in Regency romances. She is either:
A. A heroine who is confident in her body and hero totally digs the curves (Amy's personal fave)
B. A heroine who must undergo some kind of slimming regiment (Boo!)
Or C. she is just a plump girl who is a side character, friend, or fellow wallflower undeserving of her own story
And most important of all - Snarky sisters warning to all young, impressionable girls reading stories like these:
1. Do not change yourself for another person
2. Do not starve yourself to meet someone else's definition of perfection
3. Embrace who you are and what you look like, you are beautiful just the way you are!
4. Do not follow crazy, fad diets! Rice and vinegar is NOT healthy and no one should follow that diet. Ever.
5. And again, because it needs to be said twice, you are beautiful just the way you are!
Apparently, Amy really, really, really hates make-over stories. And parts of this book definitely earned a mad frowny face emoji from Beth.
Warning: This episode contains some mild adult language.
