Sweet Bitter Love

Rating:
Summary: First Rate Story
Review: "Sweet, Bitter Love" stands first and foremost as a good story with characters who will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned. On another level, it's a universal story about the couple across the street, the person at the next desk at work or sitting behind you in church. We need to make sure that books like "Sweet Bitter Love" don't get relegated to genres that limit their readership. The story is for all of us. I can't wait for the movie.

Rating:
Summary: First Rate Story
Review: "Sweet, Bitter Love" stands first and foremost as a good story with characters who will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned. On another level, it's a universal story about the couple across the street, the person at the next desk at work or sitting behind you in church. We need to make sure that books like "Sweet Bitter Love" don't get relegated to genres that limit their readership. The story is for all of us. I can't wait for the movie.

Rating:
Summary: SWEET BITTER LOVE
Review: A LOVE STORY OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY WITH A REALISM THAT FEW NEW WRITERS CAN ACHIEVE, WITHOUT HAVING EXPERIENCED THE EMOTIONAL DEPTH THEMSELVES. EVEN THOUGH THIS IS A LESBIAN LOVE STORY, IT COULD BE THE LIFE OF ANY PERSONS WHO LEARN TO TAKE THE BIG STEP OF FALLING "IN LOVE" AND BEING ABLE TO RIDE THE WAVES.

Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this
Review: An extremely realistic love story with the ending that should and does happen when people grow and find themselves. The lovers are lesbian, but their story is universal. Well written by someone who seems to have been there. I can see this as a movie some day--full of passion and pain, love and redemption.

Rating:
Summary: Fully Engaging
Review: I bought this book because I met the author at a seminar in March. I was unprepared for some of its content. As a heterosexual woman I was taken aback the women lovers because it is a life unfamiliar to me. But I stuck with it and realized that the story really is universal. Alcoholism, rollercoaster relationships, and old issues haunt any one of us. It has nothing to do with sexual preferences.
In the end, I recognized myself and a rough first marriage. I recommend this story to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover...
Review: I was pleasantly surprised by Schiano's Sweet Bitter Love. The front cover art is a bit tacky and the back cover gives the impression that it's just another romace novel. But you know what they say about judging books by their covers...

While Sweet Bitter Love is the story of a relationship between two women, it is so much more. Told in the first person, it is a candid and tender look at the emotional risks we take when we become emotionally involved with another. Schiano doesn't gloss over problems of enmeshment, alcoholism, and loss of self, rather she tackles them head on with sensitivity and insight. The end result is a story that is engrossing, powerful, and refreshingly realistic.

Rating:
Summary: A stirring romantic novel. Highly recommended!
Review: In her stirring novel, Sweet Bitter Love, Rita Schiano captures the passion, pain and fragility of modern day romantic relationships. And she does so with the honesty, insight and confidence rarely found in a writer's first novel. Sweet Bitter Love chronicles the relationship of two women. Jenny, a writer, is the main character. Susan, a business professional, is the object of Jenny's passion. This romance evolves from Jenny and Susan's chance encounter in a local coffeehouse, through their platonic friendship, to a blazing love affair that proceeds with wrenching twists and turns. It is through Jenny's eyes that the story unfolds. It is the paradoxical nature of the relationship that Schiano captures best, it is as intense as it is fragile. Readers will cycle through feelings of joy, bitterness, excitement and anger as they learn how and why the relationship unfolds as it does. Schiano aptly records Jenny's acute awareness of the personal degradation she suffers in punishment for her love of the elusive Susan. She also surprises us by her ability to have Jenny question her own self-destructiveness juxtaposed by her adeptness to rationalize how increasingly fewer "good times" off-set the anguish from the increasingly many disappointments. Jenny is stood-up, lied to, withheld important information and manipulated. In short, she fell for an alcoholic who is confused by her sexuality. Schiano is graphic and detailed in characterizing all aspects of Jenny and Susan's relationship. Whether it is from Jenny's revealing and insightful private thoughts (themselves fascinating examples of how the irrationality of yearning can over take one's world weary wisdom), to the explicit descriptions of her and Susan's love-making. The latter may be tough on the modest, gentle reader. But if the realism of honesty fits your reading palate, this is a must read. Author Schiano presents this dramatic tale of love, pain and soul-searching in clear, easy to read prose with an energizing style that dares the reader to set the book down. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Review: The writer draws in the second you begin and never lets you down. The only question is when/where will there be more???? Schiano's writing style has grace and excitment. I loved it!