Review: Sweet
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 24, 2012
A cute story. Jack is a gentleman with old fashion type values in a modern setting. He is renting the top floor at the elderly, Alice's home. He never fails to stop by and spend time with her. Alice decided to stay alone all her life when she learned the news of her fiancé's death decades ago. One day she makes a wish that she is young again and this time she would find love. Her wish is granted and she is given until New Year's Day to find true love or she will die.When she wakes up young, she pretends she is Alice's niece, Ally, and that Alice has gone away for the holidays. This time she does things very differently. She chooses up to date clothes instead of the old fashion stuff she was into and also becomes a little less conservative. Jack is suspicious and worried that something has happened to Alice since she left without telling him just the night before. He knows Ally is hiding something and decides to flirt the answer out of her. He thinks that Ally is one of the high-maintenance types, the exact opposite of what he is interested in but he ends up having feelings for her.Ally is given a lot of time to tell Jack the truth of what has happened but she waits too long. This creates a well described angst near the end. I really liked how the problem was solved.The story is very nicely written but could have done without two things. First, when Jack meets Ally he knows something isn't right. But instead of doing the easy thing of making an extra call or taking an extra step to find out whether Alice is ok or not like the normal good neighbor or friend would do, he decides to let it go and just try to get closer to Ally to find out the truth. He makes a big deal about how a complete stranger is living at Alice's house but decides not to start out taking the simplest of actions. The second thing, Ally decides to do everything the modern way in getting to know a guy, but I kept thinking most people would not give their number to a random/stranger especially after knowing them for only a few minutes. The second thing is probably just me and my more conservative/traditional beliefs, although Jack and her are not together, just getting to know each other, she decides to meet up with the stranger. Not only that, she invites him over while Jack was there. I just could not get over that even though she has an understandable reason for it.All in all, it was a sweet story which could have been a 5 star if different strategies were used for the two above mentioned descriptions.