Rating: 
Summary: NOT recommended.
Review: If you are a candy-lover you will enjoy this book. It brought back so many memories. I have enjoyed all the candies she mentions and more and loved the nostalgia of reading about treats I have not tasted in years. I especially liked the author giving her friend a shoebox full of candy as a gift. She describes pouring in a large bag of M&Ms "as a base" then burying cellophane wrapped caramels and other treasures. I like the candy holidays of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter and Mother's Day. In the off months I can just read this book again with plenty of Junior Mints, Smartees, and Bit O' Honey at my side. A sweet book with a taste treat or a memory of one on each page.
Rating: 
Summary: Who Likes Candy?
Review: If you are a candy-lover you will enjoy this book. It brought back so many memories. I have enjoyed all the candies she mentions and more and loved the nostalgia of reading about treats I have not tasted in years. I especially liked the author giving her friend a shoebox full of candy as a gift. She describes pouring in a large bag of M&Ms "as a base" then burying cellophane wrapped caramels and other treasures. I like the candy holidays of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter and Mother's Day. In the off months I can just read this book again with plenty of Junior Mints, Smartees, and Bit O' Honey at my side. A sweet book with a taste treat or a memory of one on each page.
Rating:
Summary: More fruit slices, please
Review: It has easily been fifteen years (when I worked at Morrow's Nut House in Cape May, NJ for the summer) since I have had the candy known as fruit slices. Today I had a quarter pound (and they were delish!). Hilary - I can only blame you. This fabulously fun book combines sweet with bittersweet in an all out original twist on the memoir. Composed of 57 anecdotes, some only a half of a page in length, this quick read details a life lived through candy consumption, but this is not another blow by blow memoir. While the reader certainly gets a general overview of the author's life there is not a sense that you have lived with Liftin - you do not endure her every waking moment, every high and low, just the important points (i.e.: the candy...). And while you know you like her, and easily identify with her childhood follies and romantic foibles, you realize the author is just a normal gal, like your best friend from high school. Of course the memoir is profoundly marked by the enjoyment of pound after pound of nostalgic confections and Liftin's descriptive abilities and word-play make your mouth water. But Liftin does not glamorize her "addiction", or leave us with a book of fluff. She struggles with her ability to identify, but inability to define, her addiction to candy. The worry that it is biological and inescapable vs. the worry that it is psychological and just an easy way to make her feel good about herself (or is it a sly combination of the two?) is no doubt the same worry we have all struggled with regardless of what our own addiction is. Patrick Barth's chapter heading illustrations and illustrated "Candy Timeline" and "Candy Math" charts must not be overlooked. They completely set the tone of the book and are just great at rounding out an already fun, not-to-be-missed book.
Rating:
Summary: the icing on the cake!
Review: not having a sweet-tooth myself, i found ms. liftin's ability to consume confectionary treats absolutely stunning. her ability to write about them is even better. this novel is filled with vignettes, each connected to a different type of candy, and somehow ms.liftin makes this gimmick actually work. several of the chapters had me giggling out loud--particularly when she asks why anyone would ever dip south of mentos on her mint-o-meter. she captures the bitterness of adolescence, the sourness of spoiled relationships and the spice of sheer pleasure beautifully, causing the myriad candies about which she writes to easily morph into metaphors for her life. a clever, intelligent and--yes--sweet read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Delicious Escape That Makes a Lasting Impression
Review: Recently, Hilary Liftin told an interviewer that while most readers understand that her book is about memories, they also think it's about candy. (They can be forgiven, can't they? Look at the title, not to mention chapters focused on Skittles and marshmallow eggs.) However, here's a different take: I think Liftin's light but filling (just like circus peanuts) tale is all about taste --- not just the various tastes she describes, but individual taste and discernment. Like the recent COOKING FOR MR. LATTE by Amanda Hesser, Liftin's CANDY AND ME uses a conceit (in Hesser's case, themed recipes; in Liftin's, different eras of candy consumption) to tell a real love story. Unlike Hesser, however, whose book is all about meeting, wooing and cooking for a single person, Liftin takes us through her life and loves. Her early devotion to Bubble Burgers is a mere fling, as is an affaire de coeur with her former camp counselor, Finn; in both cases, anticipation is followed by a short, happy period of consumption and ends with transition. Liftin wisely writes: "One person moves away, or the other gets bored, or they run out of things to talk about. Our desires start young, are unreasonable, and can't be trusted. But there's always another box of Junior Mints." Thus, Liftin always knew what she really wanted --- Junior Mints, Rocky Road ice cream, bottle caps (more on those in a moment) --- and also what she really disliked, such as Mary Janes ("the bane of piñatas"). Yet she still allows herself to be surprised, delighted, disappointed and hurt, both by candy and by boyfriends. A lesser person might have settled early on for the tried-and-true: Hershey's Miniatures and an investment banker. Instead, Liftin holds out for bottle caps and a fellow writer (Chris Harris, author of "the world's first anti-travel guide," DON'T GO EUROPE!). Amazingly, due mostly to good genes, the dizzying amounts of nearly pure sugar Liftin ingests over the course of her thirty-odd years have not rotted her teeth, ruined her waistline, or stunted her intellectual growth. She makes it through Yale on Smarties and through dotcom hell with Skittles. While a child, Liftin devours candy, inhaling packet after packet of dry hot cocoa mix and nipping off the tops of wax bottles like a female praying mantis devouring her partner; as she matures, she candy-hops less frequently, and instead spends her time and effort finding just the right candies in just the right (read: enormous) quantities. Are miniature bottle caps worth the trip? Read on to find out. Youth, they say, is wasted on the young --- but Hilary Liftin seems to be one of those people on whom nothing is wasted. Each mouthful of candy she chews (she prefers the dive-right-in method of candy intake) provides a memory, sure, as her readers have noticed. But the most astute will see that Liftin's soda-pop-flavored, fizzy-textured bottle caps are more than Proustian madeleines. Those dense little disks of sugar also function as diskettes of desire, candy paving stones in a life's highway. Reading CANDY AND ME is a delicious escape that makes a lasting impression. --- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Rating:
Summary: Delicious, Guilt-free Pleasure!
Review: This book is like sitting down with a big bag of your favorite candy and polishing off the whole thing - except without a morsel of guilt. It is pure delight - a coming of age memoir with wit, wisdom and pizzaz. I read it in one sitting and am recommending it to everyone!
Rating:
Summary: Funny, Romantic, Funny, Neurotic, Funny
Review: This book will undoubtedly send you to the corner store for several pounds of candy before you're halfway through it; but that is its only fault. Full of wonderful nostalgic details and extremely smart humor, Candy & Me is a hugely entertaining and unrepentent portrait of a young woman's obsessive love for sugar -- and how she found love and friendship through "bottle caps" and "circus peanuts." I loved it even though it caused me to eat so many Skittles I burned an acid hole in the left side of my cheek.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, hilarious and true...
Review: This is an entirely unique and very funny book that gives a deep and honest look into a fascinating woman. Even if my own candy addiction isn't as developed as Hilary's, I couldn't help but identify with many of her candy memories. And while Hilary's obsession with sweets remains constant, it was interesting to watch her relationships with men develop and stabilize into her now seemingly perfect marriage. This a quick, engaging book that everyone will enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: NOT recommended.
Review: This is such a dopey, pointless book. Some people want their names in print, regardless of how trivial the reason, and this is a good example of that. Maybe this would have been an okay magazine article but to try and stretch it into a whole book is tedious. You end up saying, who cares, and why did I bother? The author's feeble attempt to link her family history and romantic foibles with her love of candy is basically ridiculous. I can't recommend this book to anyone. Eat some candy instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Gave me a stomacheache
Review: This was a light and fluffy read with lots of nostalgia. Everyone can remember their favorite childhood candy and the author just about covers them all. Aside from the novelty of a biography centered around candy, I can't say this was a particularly interesting read. The author's life was dull and although she writes well, there's not much that can make up for a boring story. Reading this book gave me a stomachache. Unless you have a serious (and I do mean serious) love of candy, I wouldn't recommend it.
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