3 stars

Sweet Tea by Piper Huguley is a book that can put anyone in the summer spirit. With its evocative descriptions of a small Georgian town with a penchant for heavenly southern food, it is impossible not to think about eating some biscuits and gravy with a glass of sweet tea in hand. That part of the book is absolutely wonderful. In fact, it is so good that I found the central romance to be a jarring interruption.

Our heroine Althea is a New York lawyer who is visiting her grandmother while on a case when she meets Jack, a documentarian who is featuring the older woman in his new movie Southern Treasures. Worried that he is taking advantage, Althea does what she does best and creates a contract that will protect her grandmother's trade secrets. Over the course of the movie, they fall in love and live happily ever after. It's pretty standard Hallmark fare. What kept rubbing me the wrong way, however, was the constant repetition of the fact that she didn't trust him that went on for 70% of the book before finally shifting into love. On top of that, Jack establishes early on that he is going to marry her in a fairly aggressive case of insta-love. The entire relationship just never really solidified for me, but they are surrounded by such charming characters that it didn't completely ruin the book for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hallmark Publishing, and Dreamscape Media for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Althea is a successful lawyer that just made partner in her firm, and her first case as one is going back to the South were she's from. While she's down there she finds out there's a man that could be stealing her grandmother's recipes and she goes back to her home town to make sure her grandma's intellectual property is protected.

It was a cute but cheesy story. I enjoyed a lot the POC representation, having a strong smart black woman as a lead, and all the black history in the book. I didn't find the characters to have much chemistry and the relationship didn't really develop, I felt like I missed a big part of how they went from hating each other to wanting to be together and that's the reason for my rating. Still it was an enjoyable read.

This book was a really quick read (listen).

I enjoyed it a lot, a cute love story with very little conflict. Well written with characters full of story.

*Thank you to the publisher for this eARC.