Secrets Over Sweet Tea

by Denise Hildreth Jones
Hennepin County Library paperback 387 pages
genre: Christian fiction

Loved this! She is such a wonderful author! I don't love the style of introducing two major characters per chapter for the first three chapters . . . even though I know the story will weave them together, it's disconcerting at first to try to keep all the characters straight.

Scarlett Jo Newberry - flamboyant pastor's wife, large woman, wears bright clothes, gets into people's business
Pastor Jackson Newberry - almost too-good-to-be-true husband to Scarlett Jo and father to their four (or five?) sons
Grace Shepherd - early morning newscaster, unhappy in marriage, wishes they'd had children
Tyler Shepherd - hockey player, alcoholic, impotent and unwilling to even be affectionate with Grace (unless they're in the public eye)
Zach Craig - lawyer, feels unfulfilled in his marriage, twin daughters always fight, wife is cold and controlling
Caroline Craig - runs a clothing store, kowtows to her mother

There were many more characters, but these are the main ones. I loved Scarlett Jo!

page 23 - I like that Grace can call her friend Rachel to "talk her home" after work. She says "usually I am an advocate for your husband, just as you are for mine. You know Jason always says you're the best friend of this marriage." I think that's a cool idea - to be a best friend to another couple's marriage. To build up and encourage.

page 85 - Never having actually lived in the South, I can only imagine the truth in a statement like this: "The jab was real and purposeful, though delivered with the sugarcoating that Southern women were so adept in adding to insults." This makes me think of the comedian who talked about Southern women adding "bless her heart" to any critical comment . . .

page 122 - "Scarlett Jo watched as Grace studied her. She knew the look. She'd been measured on this scale so many times - the can-I-trust-you? scale. People needed to know that their heart was safe, their story was safe."

page 124 - "Baby, we're all broken. About the time we start believing we're not, that's when it all falls apart and we realize how bad off we are."

page 188 - "Okay, let me make this a little clearer. We come into this world with this carefree child's heart. It's open. Alive. It's connected with God and believes anything is possible. It doesn't know much fear, and it has this kind of abandoned wonder. But then at some point - I don't know when, maybe in high school, maybe in college, maybe after we graduate - something happens to us."

page 248 - "Hold on there, chief. The only one living in the exploding Crayola box is you. Me and Grace here are chocolate and vanilla kind of girls, not rainbow sherbet."

page 252 - made me think of Jodi! "Scarlett Jo read so much, in fact, that her kids said she needed one of those e-readers. But she liked real live books, the kind with paper and ink - which was why she liked Landmark.  They still sold read books."

page 331 - Grace's observation that she was "so consumed" with her own story and problems that she never asked Scarlett Jo about her life. How true! We tend to focus on our own stuff and neglect to realize that other people are dealing with their own issues.

page 368 - I could see it coming . . . ugh! But the scene didn't turn out the way I expected. Thankfully.

page 376 - my favorite scene in the whole book! Scarlett Jo has a heart-to-heart with Caroline. Loved this!

What a wonderful book!