Sweet Misrortune by Kevin Alan Milne

This is #89, I am skipping 88 because I can't remember the title!  I will have to wait and pull the book out at home to do that one.

Okay let me start about book covers and how they don't always match up to what the book is.  To be honest and I know this will sound sexist as all get out, but I never would have thought this book was written by a man.  I would say this book is a lot like a Nicholas Sparks book in some ways so for a male writer I would have expected a tad bit more masculine cover.  This cover to me is very feminine. 

Personally I don't care if a man or a woman wrote it, the story sounded good.  Sophie is in a bad accident on her 9th Birthday.  She feels she is to blame for that and all the "tragedies" in her life since then.  The best way to describe her is hopelessly pessimistic, but in an adorably charming way.  Normally I don't like negative people like that, but she is negative in a funny, sad and sweet way.  If she were someone I met, I think we would be friends.

Anyway back to Sophie's story.  All her life she has loved chocolate, and it is that love that she thinks caused the accident that killed four people including her parents and grandmother.  I was surprised that it didn't turn her off of chocolate, and instead she opened her own shop.

Chapter one gives us the background of the accident.  Chapter two starts on her 29th birthday as her best friend and foster sister is going to work with her in Sophie's shop to spend the day and give her a surprise.  The surprise is her ex-fiance that dumped her a little more than a week before their wedding.  Not that Sophie was too surprised, she had been expecting her heart to get broken since she had me Garrett.

Garrett was back and wanting to explain to Sophie why he did what he did.  She doesn't want to listen, she doesn't believe that happiness exists anyway.  In their argument Sophie challenges him to place an ad in the local paper to find 100 examples of happiness that doesn't "fleet".  She reserves the right to disqualify and letters she doesn't believe fit.  After three weeks there are only three letters.  All of which Sophie has managed to disqualify for one reason or another.

After the story of the ad hits the news, the letters start flooding in and so begins Sophie's journey to deal with her past.  I'm not going to say anymore because I don't want to give it away.  Let's just say its a beautiful story.  I really enjoyed this and would definitely recommend this book.

It does make you think about happiness and how to each individual happiness is different.  But I do believe that there is no such thing as happiness that doesn't "fleet".  If you felt constant happiness you wouldn't recognize it or appreciate it.  Life is an ebb and flow of good and bad.  But I thought I would take this to list what my happiness is:

1.  Looking in my husband's eyes when he is telling me he loves me.
2.  Spending time with my beautiful nieces and nephews. 
3.  Laughing with Brittany and Amanda while watching Celtic Thunder!  :)
4.  A really good book.
5.  Hanging out with my friends, whether we are laughing or crying!
6.  Knowing I've made a difference in someones life just by caring.