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The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season has the plot and makings of your traditional piece of women’s fiction. The abused women, the family secrets, the stalker and the Good Man the heroine falls for, the traumatized child who blossoms under the summer sun; the tropes here are familiar and well-worn. But Molly Fader’s talent makes all the difference and manages to create a compelling atmosphere from a series of stock plotlines, and the results are admirable.
Hope Wright arrives in the middle of the night with a black eye, a bloody face and her silent ten-year-old daughter, Jenny, nicknamed Tink, upon the doorstep of a rundown cherry farm in Northern Michigan. Orchard House, located in Elk Falls, was where Hope’s late mother grew up and where Hope once lived with both her parents, though she has no memory of the place. Hope is running from an abusive stalker ex, a man she hit in self-defense and who is using his injuries to keep her in his life and in line; she knows she’ll find solace at the cherry farm, but things don’t quite go that way to start with, as she’s immediately confronted by a woman with a shotgun guarding the place from intruders – who turns out to be her Aunt Peg.
Aunt Peg is a tough old salt of a woman who gives her niece a bottle of Vicodin for her black eye the first night she’s on the farm, just to make sure she’s not an IV drug user like Hope’s mother Denise was. While Hope has no memory of visiting the farm, Peg knows that Hope has been there – that in fact, her stay was quite a lengthy one – and was ruined by a choice Denise made, which fractured her relationship with Peg and Hope’s connection to Peg. Denise eventually kicked the habit but had an off-kilter relationship with Hope, one part uncaring and one part smothering, which was never properly resolved before Denise died.
Peg agrees to put up Hope and Tink in the barn, if Hope and Tink promise to help her bring in the cherry harvest. She has no help on this farm that’s seen better days, beyond her dog, Nelson, and Abel, a farmer on a neighboring patch of land who helps out every cherry season and takes a shine to Hope. Peg does not cherish memories – Denise’s destructive choices have ensured that she wouldn’t – and her ruined relationship with her ex-husband, Hank, has reinforced that belief, so she doesn’t expect to become attached to Hope and Tink.
Cherry season, together with Hope’s help in refurbishing the rundown far, begin to soften Peg’s stance on that notion. Soon Hope begins to put down roots. But will Hope’s stalker resurface and ruin things?
There’s a lot of beautiful things running beneath the surface of this book – chief among them Molly Fader’s easygoing but impressive way of building a story. The way she writes about the impact a traumatic upbringing has had on all three Wright women is fascinating, and she allows time, their shared company and life on the farm to heal them, as opposed to their being healed by love from outside.
Fader captures quite well the sensation of what it is to work land, and how it feels to flex your muscles stiff picking fruit.
Tink feels like a realistic ten-year-old, and I adored crusty Peg. Hope comes off as bland but strong-willed, as does Abel. The Abel/Hope romance is just decent, lacking a certain punch, but leaves the reader happy that Hope – who has suffered enough – is happy. I liked the lived-in feeling of Hank and Peg’s relationship more.
Best of all is the multi-generational friendship between the Wright women and Peg’s lifelong friend, Carole, who has been estranged from Peg for reasons I won’t specify here. It’s sweet and fun.
Ultimately, The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season is, well, bitter and sweet, and a pretty good slice of women’s fiction even with its imperfections.
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Grade: B+
Book Type: Women's Fiction
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 07/09/20
Publication Date: 09/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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For those who may be unaware, Molly Fader is the name Molly O’Keefe uses to publish books that don’t quite fit the romance genre. If you’ve read O’Keefe’s Riverview Inn or Notorious series, you know that, even when she’s writing romance, O’Keefe likes family dramas where characters gradually find their way back to a favorite childhood place. Regardless of the genre or name she’s publishing under, Fader/O’Keefe is an excellent writer and is well worth a look.
I didn’t know this is her nom de plume for women’s fiction! It’s a fine book – filled with grit.
It’s odd to me–why use a pen name for genres that have overlap? She uses M. O’Keefe for her dark romances, Molly O’Keefe for her more mainstream romances, and Molly Fader for women’s fiction. What does that do for her?
I’m not sure, but possibly she feels that she has a different reader base for each genre—and she wants to signal to her readers what type of book they’re getting based on the author name.
I sympathize with how she’s chosen to do it, to be honest. If you write dark romance, you don’t want your contemporary romance reading audience to find your work, unless you run on the spicier side of the romance field in the first place.