Possible Triggers: Domestic Violence
Rob Cussen lives in a beautiful California suburb with her handsome husband Irving and two daughters, Callie and Annie. Her life is beginning to become undone, and the cracks are beginning to show. Irving cheats on her constantly, and while Annie, the youngest and her favorite, is the sweetest child, she worries about the strange, friendless twelve-year-old Callie. Still, she’s determined to give the girls a normal, "All-American" life...a type of life that she had been denied. So-what if it means putting up with the increasingly violent Irving, whose bitterness toward her no longer emerges just through his cheating. These two have knock-down, drag-out fights that sometimes have Rob running for her life. Still, she can't bring herself to leave him. She’s determined to stay in this nightmare of a marriage...are you ready for this? To give her daughters a "stable??", family life with both parents. This was the first of many times that I wanted to hit her upside the head with the book!! Then an incident between her children occurs that forces her to finally face the truth that she’s been trying to hide. Shocked into action by the violence she witnesses between her girls, she decides to take Callie, the main instigator, back with her to her family’s home out in the Mojave Desert. The reader gets both sides of the story both from Rob and Callie’s perspectives. The story is a frightening puzzle of a novel that unfolds in overlapping layers as Rob struggles with the need for both supremacy and survival...especially from her eldest daughter. Her past has marked her, but is Callie destined to the same fate or is Rob just giving in to the madness and paranoia in trying to "save her child? I was surprised by how few of the plot twists I could see in this tale of this complicated, terrible family and the ghosts of the past that haunted them. Rob and Callie are difficult, almost impossible characters to like, but by the end, I was more invested in them both. The author has managed to cleverly unravel this families seemingly terrible decisions in such unexpected yet realistic ways, making this one of the most startlingly convincing novels I have ever read. ( )

Twisty good fun! ( )

I enjoyed this book. It was gripping with some great twists. I thought the characters and their relationships were interesting. I did think the ending was a bit weak, with an unneeded twist that didn't make sense. Overall, I would recommend to someone wanting a book with dark complex female characters, or an interesting psychological horror. ( )

This was a weird story and I wasn't sure how Catriona Ward was going to bring it all together but she made it happen by the end of the book. I found it a little slow at times and I am still unsure who pale Callie is but the story was good overall. ( )

Okay I don't even know where to start with this book.

What didn't work for me: Holy Sweet Tea is everybody in this book fucked up. Name a personal problem and somebody's got it. More than a couple. The list of abuses is harrowing and some might say gratuitous but Ward's credit she always makes it work. There are significant bits about animal cruelty and experimentation that made it personally disturbing for me but that was the point. Also there were twists upon twists, so much so that I was expecting/anticipating more twists even though the book was chock full even up until the last page. The book within a book should have been cut, as it brought morning to the story. Not every twist worked for me but they were executed well.
Lastly I personally despise the 2 main tropes of this genre: All Men Are Evil and All Women Leads Hate Them and this story is bookended by both.

Now onto the good stuff of which there is plenty. Damn, Ms. Ward can write! Every so often I was blown away by the way she made complex metaphors flow right off the page. Deeply layered characters are rendered with such masterful skill that they feel like real, flawed and multifaceted people. You get the impression that Ward could write a whole book about any one of them and make it a page turner. Next, this work was incredibly creepy on a deeply psychological level. I felt unsettled every single chapter and that's not an easy task. Even the (to me) unlikeable characters had distinct and hypnotic voices which kept bringing you back for more. To make me want to spend time in their deeply disturbed heads? It's like a car accident that just gets more upsetting the harder you look but you can't help yourself.
Catriona Ward's SUNDIAL did things to my psyche and I'm too afraid to thank her for it.
Pick up this book. Then go watch Full House afterward. You'll need to. ( )