Paperback Reader

Lisa Kleypas, the New York Times Bestselling author of over twenty historical romance novels, joined many of her contemporaries by jumping into the modern-day world with her first hardcover, Sugar Daddy. The first person narrative follows the life of Liberty Jones from age thirteen on as she navigates the world of West Texas. Saddled with great responsibility at a young age and abandoned by Hardy, the boy she loves, Liberty fights to create a life for herself and her little sister. After years of struggle she achieves something beyond her dreams only to be forced to decide if she should follow a path of new love with Gage Travis or let past love and nostalgia send her back to Hardy when he finally returns.

Kleypas makes the switch from her historical third person narrative to her contemporary first almost effortlessly with Liberty’s drawling rhythms rarely breaking flow. She does not manage, however, to leave many of her historical writing plot conventions behind. Gage and Hardy could easily have been cast in one of her former novels, both displaying beliefs and attitudes more suited to centuries before. Liberty’s narrative attempts to assuage this notion by placing most of the story in the moneyed, patriarchy of the Texas elite. Without falling into hyperbole, Kleypas makes it clear that this is a place where the men are proud to be men and the women wouldn’t mind being taken care of in life.

This argument would stand had Liberty not also displayed tendencies similar to her historical counterparts. Liberty, despite her desire to find a replacement for the dream of what being with Hardy could have been like and avail herself to a wealthy Sugar Daddy to help her out in life, remains sheltered and innocent in many ways. Her sexual relationships before she meets up with her hero are few, tepid and decidedly not Sugar Daddy-esque, despite encouragement from friends and coworkers to do what she needs to fulfill her wants and desires. Even the life choices (her schooling, the decision to move into Churchill’s mansion, the final business revelations that help her choose which man to be with) that Liberty is so proud to have made for herself are all (with the exception of keeping custody of her sister) directed by outside male forces. It would have been interesting to see how Liberty would have emerged had Kleypas let her take on a real Sugar Daddy or pull down a forty hour a week job while attending hairdressing school and caring for her sister. She would have become a much harder woman to be sure, but also one with the clear freedom of knowing she controlled her own destiny.

This is not to say that Sugar Daddy is a bad contemporary at all, but simply that the author has been unable to completely abandon her writing past for her future. This novel, which begins as a coming of age piece of Women’s fiction, morphs two-thirds of the way through to embrace Kleypas’s romance roots—complete with the alpha hero, the big misunderstanding and the inability to communicate when the main couple needs it both. To engineer this change, one of the men is clearly cast in the role of antagonist despite previous tendencies to the contrary, making Liberty’s decision easy and stunting her emotional growth. Had this been a Historical Romance, I would have accepted this as reflective of the time period, but since it was not I felt cheated for Liberty and myself. Having invested hours of my life in viewing the world through Liberty’s eyes, I wanted her to be able to achieve her happy ending on her own and not require outside interference to come to the correct decision. As it was, I found the book readable, but disappointing.

Fans of Kleypas’s historicals might find the transition to her contemporary novel easier to handle than those authors whose styles changed radically upon entering a new market thanks to her use of similar themes and characters, but for those expecting more, please realize that you’ll be disappointed. Liberty, despite being our sole guide to this world, does not contain the unique qualities necessary to capture the reader’s heart like the best Kleypas heroines of the past and suffers for that lack. Regardless of the fact that this is well plotted book (up until the plot contrivance at the end) with a charismatic heroine, it fails to live up to past potential. Whether this remains a problem in Kleypas’s future contemporary novels has yet to be seen.

If you’re interested in purchasing a copy of Sugar Daddy and making your own decisions regarding whether or not the novel successfully makes the jump to the mainstream, you can find it here and here. If you’re interested instead in reading some of Lisa Kleypas’s historicals you can find a list of all the books here at her official site.