If I took my copy of Sweet Success and cut it in half at its midpoint, I would be left with two books of very unequal quality. The first book would be a nuanced, entertaining study of characters I want to know better. The second book would be an irritating depiction of psychologically inconsistent people I could hardly finish with quickly enough. Not only does the book not live up to its considerable initial promise, the later story developments tainted my memory of the more entertaining first half as well.

Ali Thomas is the proprietor of a deluxe chocolate shop in a small California town. She has made Santa Magdalena her home, and tolerates visits from her ex-movie-star mother and her mother’s pet pig, as well as enjoying the friendship of many of the locals and her stepbrother (one of the most unaffected and realistic gay characters I’ve come across in a romance.) When she needs her back room rebuilt, she hires Matt Baker, the local handyman’s latest apprentice. Matt, no ordinary carpenter, is obviously a tortured drifter running away from a tragic past.

So far, so good – I found all of the characters endearing, enjoyed the details of Ali’s chocolate business, and found Matt to be convincingly tortured. Despite himself, he becomes increasingly enmeshed in the local culture as Ali patiently urges him out of his shell, but his pain and his desire to stay detached and numbed felt very real to me.

My problems began with the first love scene. It balled up a whole bunch of clichés that I don’t like – Matt is so drunk he can hardly stand, but becomes instantaneously sober the moment they start kissing. Ali is so swept up in the moment, enjoying the whiskey-flavored kisses (like, ew) so much that she completely forgets about birth control. The love scene was only the beginning of the problems, because from that moment on Matt is apparently healed of all his torment while Ali immediately deteriorates into an insecure shrew.

The rest of the book is a mess. Ali seemed fairly level-headed during the first half, but becomes completely neurotic and childish. Meanwhile, Matt just tries to show what a perfect, studly guy he is. This is a huge problem; he got over all of his tortured past overnight thanks to a love scene that by rights he shouldn’t even remember. The bigger problem is this: Matt abandoned his old life because of his guilt over a terrible act. And the act he’s running from is, indeed, terrible. But it’s also completely implausible, and absolutely doesn’t fit with the new, healed, non-emotional-cripple self he presents the moment he gets his hands on Ali. By implausible I don’t mean that no one has ever done what Matt did; I’m sure people have. But if they did, and had the same reaction to their own behavior, they simply wouldn’t be able to make the instantaneous zero-to-hero leap that Matt makes. A guy with Matt’s past would need to do a lot more healing and soul-searching before coming to terms with his actions and forgiving himself; Matt seems to merely forget about it. Ali’s character is similarly inconsistent; the insecurities she eventually displays are simply too deep to mesh with her earlier character, and the reasons we’re given for those insecurities are much too pat.

I wish I could have liked this book better overall because there were certainly moments I enjoyed. The prose was very readable, the quirky secondary characters endearing. If the main characters had been less frustrating, I would be able to recommend this book. As it is I can’t, but the bright spots were enough to make me watch for this author in the future.