Flavors by Emily Sue Harvey ~ Blog Tour

Product Description


Emily Sue Harvey’s first novel, Song of Renewal, was praised by New York Times bestselling author Jill Marie Landis as “an uplifting, heartwarming story,” by bestselling author Kay Allenbaugh as a work that will “linger in the memory long after readers put it aside,” and by Coffee Time Romance as “a must-read book for anyone doing a little soul searching.” New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry said, “It captures your attention, and whets your appetite for more,” while Peeking between the Pages called it “quite simply a beautiful book.”
Now, in Flavors, this master storyteller of the human heart sweeps us along with twelve-year-old Sadie Ann Melton as she enters a life-altering season. The summer of 1950 will change everything for her. For in that summer, she will embark on an odyssey at once heartbreakingly tender and crushingly brutal. At times, she will experience more darkness than she has ever witnessed before. At others, she will thrill to lightness and joy she never imagined. By summer’s end, the Melton women in Sadie’s journey – loving her, coaxing her, and commanding her – will help shape her into the woman she becomes. And they will expose Sadie to all of the flavors of life as she savors the world that she brings into being.


Filled with charm, wisdom, and the smorgasbord of emotions that comes with the first steps into adulthood, Flavors once again proves Emily Sue Harvey’s unique ability to touch our souls with her unforgettable stories.

My take on this book:
"Flavors" by Emily Sue Harvey introduces us to Sadie Ann Melton, a grown woman who decides to reflect on the summer of 1950, the summer that changed and shaped her life, allowing her to grow into the woman she became.
In 1950 twelve year old Sadie Ann Melton and her brother are in need of a babysitter, since the families live in babysitter/housekeeper ran off and got married. The only real solution that her parents could come up with was to take the kids to spend the weeks on the grandparents farm, and then come get them on the weekends. The Melton farm consisted of a passel of kids living in a four room house without indoor plumbing, for Sadie she was excited to get to spend the summer with her aunt Nellie Jane, who was just one year older. During Sadie's stay she experiences the freedom to run wild over the farm, she also feels the pangs of homesickness, but most of all it was the summer that she starts to leave childhood behind!

This book easily transports the reader to farm life, the descriptions of the farm house, tiny as it was filled to the brim with kids was so easy to envision. When Sadie mentions that grandma Melton was alot like Ma Kettle, it planted a picture in my mind of the Melton clan that was quite vivid.. Each chapter is like a tiny snippet of the important events that shaped Sadie that summer. Sadie liked to assign flavors to her emotions, she likens life to a huge pie, with each slice of life having a different flavor, and during that summer Sadie's emotions were all over the place, from strawberry sweet to sour grapes when something didn't go her way.
I think that anyone who enjoys a good coming of age story set in the south will enjoy reading this story, be prepared to laugh but also be prepared for a few poignant moments as well. Even though this book was a short novella, its filled to the brim with a story that draws you in and keeps your attention until the last sentence. Emily Sue Harvey is a new to me author, but I will definitely be looking for more of her work.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this book click here.


    About the author:                                                                           

Emily Sue Harvey, author and speaker, writes to make a difference. Dozens of her upbeat stories and articles appear in Chocolate for Women, Chicken Soup for the Soul, women’s magazines, websites, and other anthologies.
Her first hardback novel, Song of Renewal,
 was released by The Story Plant in July, 2009.



An expanded paperback version of Song of Renewal, plus three novellas and two more full-length novels (Homefires and Unto These Hills) will come from The Story Plant in 2011.



To find out more about Emily visit http://www.renewalstories.com/ or http://www.emilysueharvey.com/.