Sugar Daddy: A Novel (The Travis Family, 1)

Growing up in a trailer park in the small town of Welcome, Texas, Liberty Jones and her mother do the best they can. They love each other, but like most folks in Welcome, they haven't had it easy and every day brings new challenges. Liberty falls in love as a teenager with Hardy Cates, neighbor and her personal white knight. When he takes off to make his way in the world and shake Welcome Texas off his back, he leaves his heart with Liberty and takes hers with him. Years pass, seasons change, tragedy strikes and Liberty's life is turned upside down, shaken around, and then flipped again. Her only constants are her strong will, her love of her little sister, Carrington, and that of the boy she once knew, Hardy. Living a new life in a new city, struggling to make her way, Liberty befriends a wealthy older man, Churchill Travis, and a relationship most people speculate on, but few understand, forms. This is so much more than a romance novel, so different from any book I have ever read. First of all the book spends a lot of time with Liberty and Hardy as teenagers, so by the time they hit adulthood you really feel like you know them, because you watched them grow up. Then just when you think you think you know how this story is going to end, in walk Churchill and Gage, and Liberty's life goes through yet another phase. Sugar Daddy is about the love between mother and daughters, sibling's, unrequited loves, lost loves, first loves, and forever loves. It touches on the complexities of relationships and on how things appear on the outside aren't always the case on the inside. Ms. Kleypas packed a miniseries of a book into one novel, and did it flawlessly, creating a diverse tale about one woman's life. This book is a definite keeper, it will go on my book shelf beside my other favorites, where I can reread, revisit and enjoy, time and time again. Fantastic. Blue-Eyed Devil Cherise Everhard, April 2008

I too usually don't like contemporary books but this was a great exception. As another person mentioned it was up there with my favorite Judith McNaught books. I will put down 2 out of 4 books I read when the characters just aren't interesting and this one was great. I find it hard to believe that others gave it such low ratings. It will make you laugh and cry and feel good. It was nice to have a book that didn't follow the same typical storyline of strong willed naive woman not want to fall in love, fall in love, then get sick/kidnapped/other tragedy, get saved, and then get married. This one was refreshingly unpredictable.

When awkward teenager Liberty Jones meets self-assured, loner Hardy Cates her life is changed forever. Liberty and her mother have just moved to a trailer home in Welcome, Texas. Hardy lives in the same trailer park with his mother and three siblings. Both the Cates the Jones families don't have much in the way of money, but their ties to their family make their lives complete. Liberty's mother works hard to support her daughter on her own, and when she becomes pregnant, Liberty steps in to help shoulder the extra burden. Likewise, Hardy also comes from a single parent home (his father is in prison) and he works hard outside the home to provide extra income for his family. Liberty is going through puberty when she first meets Hardy and she falls for him hard. He is her constant advocate, helping her with tests, teaching her to play basketball, helping her see her own inner and outer beauty. But Hardy wants nothing more than to one day leave the sheltered trailer park life behind him and make something of his life. He is determined to not wind up like his father and he knows that falling in love with Liberty will only make it harder for him to go. To both of their dismay, he refuses to get involved with her and he walks away from Welcome and Liberty without turning back. Shortly after, Liberty loses her mother in an accident and is left to raise her two-year-old sister alone. Forced to act as a single mother to her sister Carrington, Liberty makes sacrifice after sacrifice to ensure they are both fed, healthy, and happy. She sets out on a career path as a hair stylist and moves with Carrington to Houston to work at a prestigious salon. Once there, she meets Churchill Travis, a successful businessman who the other stylists tell her would make a perfect "sugar daddy." Liberty has never considered such an arrangement, but when Churchill takes a personal interest in her and offers her a live-in position as his assistant, she lets herself be swayed for the sake of her sister. Living with Churchill will give Carrington opportunities Liberty could never afford on her own. Soon Liberty has found love, happiness, and contentment in the Travis home and things are going well. But when Hardy steps back into her life after nearly 10 years, she has to decide if she's willing to sacrifice the happiness she's found for the future she'd always dreamed of. I was skeptical when I found out Lisa Kleypas, one of the leading authors of historical romances, was going to be writing a contemporary novel. I mean, her historicals are so good--why ruin a good thing? Well, I'm here to admit that I was wrong. I forgive her for going the route of contemporary, and if they're all going to be this good, I say keep at it. Sugar Daddy was "unputdownable." I read it in six hours and stayed up until 3 in the morning to do so (and I have to go to work in the morning). But there was simply no other choice. I became absorbed in the characters, in the story, in the outcome and I just

I was amazed how drawn into this book I was. I knew it wasn't going to be like Lisa's historical romances, so there were no surprises for me there. What was different was that it was written in first person and starts when Liberty is 14 years old. And Liberty's childhood wasn't just backstory to bring you up to the present. Lisa really went in depth into Liberty's teen years and the struggles she went through. Parts of it were funny and other parts were heartbreaking. Because of that detail, I really felt an emotional connection with Liberty. My heart broke when Hardy left because I felt for sure he was the one for Liberty. Then Gage shows up and you think he's the one until Hardy returns to the scene. Since it's all first person, you don't know what anyone else is thinking, so you really don't know who she's going to end up with. This was one book I couldn't put down until it was finished. It definitely wasn't like Lisa's other books, but good writing is good writing and Lisa has a gift for storytelling regardless of whether it's a historical romance or not.