[ Book Review ] Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in France by Karen Wheeler

Back Cover Blurb: Fashion editor Karen Wheeler thought she had it all: a glamorous job, a handsome boyfriend, a fabulous home, and an even more fabulous assortment of gorgeous shoes. But not all is as it seems, and on an impulse she decides to wave good-bye to her glamorous city lifestyle and go it alone in a run-down house in rural France.

Tout Sweet is the perfect read for anyone who dreams of chucking away her BlackBerry in favor of real blackberrying and downshifting to a romantic, alluring locale where new friendships, and new loves, are just some of the treasures to be found amongst life’s simple pleasures.

Review: Having recently come into a job that comes with a BlackBerry and loving France, Tout Sweet interested me immediately. Like Wheeler’s friends, I wished I could buy a house to renovate in France. I kept up with the pacing and found the story interesting enough to keep turning to the next chapter. As a bit of light summer reading, Wheeler’s foray into creative writing fit the bill perfectly. I did find that it read more like a novel than a memoir, which either speaks to Wheeler’s writing versatility or indicates that the reader will be left wondering if she should have stuck with one or the other.

Perhaps in an effort capture the demographic that feeds on Eat, Pray, Love and its like, this memoir was too hastily pushed to publication. The prose is polished (if a little heavy on the literary devices. Not every description requires a simile or metaphor.) and the story complete, but the ending fell somewhat hollow. For all the time spent developing her emotional turmoil, the culminating epiphany in the second-to-last chapter didn’t satisfy as a culmination of the preceding 300 pages. So in the end, entertaining? Yes. Giggle-inducing? Sure. Insightful? Not really. The story may have been better suited to fiction than memoir but is still a fun afternoon read.