At First Sight: Dulcie Carter loves candy, and she's working hard to keep her mother's candy shop - Candy Land Confections - above water following her mother's passing. It's not easy though, while she's trying to get her masters (to fullfil her mother's wish that she got a proper education) and trying to compete against How Sweet It Is, her store's biggest rival.
But money is tight and business isn't going as well as one might hope - thanks in part to How Sweet It Is super cheap prices and the bad economy. There is, however, one thing that might help: The Chocolatiers Association's Taste of the Year Award and the price money it offers.
Not that Dulcie is ready to enter, having lost in an spectacular fashion the first time she tried to enter after her mom's death - even though with her mother's recipes they had always won, before.
Nick Sugarman is trying to prove to his father that he's ready to take over the family business, even if his passion toward candy lies more in the eating of it, than the making, particularly in the automatized way his father runs their store.
Still, he was willing to do almost anything to make sure he got to be the one to succeed his father... until he met a cute girl at a club and he fell head over heels in love.
Second Glance: There are so many things I liked about Sugar Rush, it is a sweet confection of a book. I loved the whole world of candy and candy making and the chocolates that were described made me drool.
I liked Dulcie and her friends, and how she keeps trying to honor her mom's memory. Yet she's still fairly young and it shows sometimes in her decisions and thought process, I liked this because she sounded her age.
I loved Nick, he sounded kind of dreamy but he had a past as a chubby kid and still kept a lot of the defense mechanisms - but he knows and acknowledges this, so he doesn't come off as a jerk - and he makes delicious cupcakes.
And he's one of those guys who understands the concept of "A big gesture" and he's not afraid to go to the distance to right some wrongs. Dulcie often jumped to the wrong conclusion, but most of the time it made sense that she thought what she did given the information she had, so again, it was easy to keep on liking her.
If there was something I wasn't thrilled about was Dulcie's grandmother Evelyn. I often times felt like she was using Dulcie, and left her to do the heavy lifting about the store.
Bottom Line: Sugar Rush is an adorable book, with drool worthy candy descriptions and a sweet romance to match, even if it was fairly PG-13. The story just flew buy and it was fun and fluffy and cute.
Favorite QuoteHe grabbed one of the red velvet cupcakes with stabilized raspberry whipped cream icing, topped with a fondant heart for breakfast. He never officially named his cupcakes, of course—that would be silly—but he’d be lying if he didn’t secretly think of this one as the Queen of Hearts.
