Icing Paperback – Import, 29 Nov 2016

​Isn’t it always the case when we decide to ‘swear off’ something, like dating, or men, or giving up sweets to try a new diet/fad that suddenly, that which we swore off, comes by, looks up at us with its hopeful eyes, and we fall head over heels before we remember we swore off said thing, and the reason why we did it in the first place??As was the case for Denie. She decided, after her last relationship completely drained her, that she was done. She didn’t want to fall in love and have her heart shattered all over again. Unless he was her “dream crush wearing a number 29 on the back of his hockey jersey.” And lo and behold, there he was, just as excited about the prospect of being with her.This was such a cute little story! I love Debra Sue Brice’s writing. She wrote out Denie’s internal monologues of fear, of love, of brokenness and conviction that I was rooting for Denie’s happy ending. She was real to me. And I wanted her goodness recognized, and her happiness realized. In fact, I almost wanted to maim a certain hockey player but goodness, you’re just going to have to read through this one to understand the level of anxiety I had!I have met very few people that matched Denie’s goodness and love for her friends and family, and her amazing faith in Christ. That’s the thing when we try to move forward knowing that pain is inevitable but it’s the love that Christ has for us that we know we are also equipped with support, and strength that we didn’t realize we had. Very few of us understand the gravity of Grace.​This is a beautiful and simple story about a girl and a guy in a chance meeting and falling in love. It’s a story about a girl finding peace in God’s grace. It’s about a guy who finds God and what his newfound faith could become. And to top off the fact that this story has cupcakes?? Which are a favorite of mine, fyi. Well, that’s just the Icing on this sweet romance.

Icing is a sweet romance about a woman who fights with her insecurities about relationships. The book is mostly told through a lot of introspection. Tom seemed so perfect that there really wasn't anything to dislike about him. He wasn't a knight in shining armor or a bad dude turned good. It seemed laid back but lacked some fire. I think Tom seemed so perfect that it was untrustworthy. I kept expecting him to show up with another kid but that didn't happen.Denie is okay as the heroine but her insecurities kept getting in the way of the story. And because of that, she kept having trust issues. Not that I didn't understand why she had trust issues. I did. One gets tired of being hurt after all and it's hard to want to open yourself up again.I think this book would have served better as a novella than a full length novel as a lot of times Denie is simply repeating to herself about her insecurities. All in all, the book is fine. I enjoyed the different cupcakes and I loved her friends. They seemed like a great bunch. Denie's voice is genuine and comes out through the novel.

Let me begin by saying this is my first venture into a book of this kind. I’ve never read a contemporary romance before so going into this I was somewhat curious if I would feel out of place. To Ms. Brice’s credit, it is impossible to not feel welcomed into the world of her story. Told from the point of view of Denie, a cupcake store owner, the reader is treated to Denie’s innermost thoughts. This gives the novel a conversational and personable feel, and quickly pulls you into Denie’s life and that of her group of loyal friends.Denie is an interesting protagonist. She has been hurt but when you meet her, she is also at a point where she feels she is past it all and at the same time fully aware she will never truly recover. That kind of hardened vulnerability was intriguing to find in a story. A character who understood herself but at the same time refused to accept, at first, the faintest suggestion of those lingering wounds healing. Kind of the way some people pick at their scabs, any thought of getting better seemed to tear open a little hole again and draw her into bitterness. And that was a real sign of genuine characters, because as I read, though I’m a man and sometimes felt like I was he enemy or something, I found myself recognizing various girls and women I have known over the years. Early on I found myself drawing comparisons between Icing and The Silver Linings Playbook. The ethos and sanity level of the protagonists are quite different, but the style of the writing and some of the way Cleveland and hockey fandom almost become characters themselves, were strongly reminiscent of Silver Linings Playbook. In a good way. Thankfully Denie is much saner than Pat from Silver Linings Playbook. She is quirky in an endearingly human way, much as was said in The Breakfast Club, “We’re all bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.” Fortunately for the reader, Denie doesn't hide anything from the reader she hasn’t hidden from herself.The characters are the real draw of the story and though there were times more telling than showing than I would like, I eventually saw the tendency as reasonable. With direct access to the protagonist’s thoughts I understand why that would be taking place. And given the amount of humorous asides Denie has throughout the book, you really don’t want the story told any other way. Denie is a character you root for and can respect. She is strongly grounded in her faith and values, which is another strength of this novel as well. It is a sweet romance, but it also has a really nice parallel running throughout the story of Denie’s ability to trust Tom with her heart and being able to trust God with the same. In incredible timing, my devotional of the day as I finished reading Icing was about trusting God to work as He must. This is Denie’s struggle, to relinquish the hold on the reins of her life and let God lead. You see the development of her faith in how she handles Icing (her cupcake store’s name which gave the novel its title), her relationship with Tom and her sister, and with her expectations. By the novel’s end, Denie is a changed person. Weaving that kind of transformational story into a sweet romance without changing the balance of the flavors for a reader is something truly special.