Throughout Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s Bittersweet, the protagonist is reading – or trying to read – John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the story of man’s fall from grace. While she may not succeed in finishing, the two stories are about the loss of innocence and the consequences we all face from our decisions, even those of our ancestors.
Mabel Dagmar is a shy and bookish, plain girl attending college on financial aid, far away from her abusive parents and their low-income dry-cleaning business. Her roommate, Genevra “Ev” Winslow, is her opposite: beautiful, popular, and from an incredibly wealthy family. She has no care in the world, especially not for Mabel. That is until one night and one tragedy binds them together. Mabel’s newfound friendship is almost too good to be true. When Ev invites her to spend the summer with her on her family’s summer estate, Winloch, Mabel cannot pass up the opportunity to reinvent herself, change her life, and become a Winslow. She’s determined to make it happen.
Bittersweet is the name of Ev’s personal cottage at Winloch, the paradise in Vermont where Ev and her family live a picture-perfect life. The Winslows are a clan with names, like Luvenia, Banning, and Tilde, that can only belong to a family with old money. Patriarch Birch welcomes Mabel and soon she is immersed in the large, extended family’s long-standing traditions. Mabel falls in love with Winloch and its promises: a summer that smells of wet dogs, is filled with the laughter of naked children playing on Flat Rock, and the thrill of sneaking a boat out to Turtle Island to skinny-dip in the moonlight. Desperate to stay, Mabel falls under the wing of Ev’s eccentric aunt, Indo, the family’s black sheep who offers Mabel a permanent place at Winloch…if she helps expose the rotten core of the Winslow empire.
The glittery world of Winloch is full of complex characters that are not what they seem at first glance. Ev is both impulsive and calculating, with seemingly no moral conscience and yet, Mabel follows her like a puppy longing for her approval. Her mother Tilde’s cold exterior is what she needs to protect the family – along with dead-bolted locks on select doors. And Mabel is hiding a secret of her own.
Bittersweet takes you to a world where the family image reigns supreme and what you do – or don’t do – to protect its secrets defines who you are. It’s a story that grips you from the start and makes you question how far you would go to stay in paradise.
Twisted Talk: What would you do to protect your family? What is your favorite summer vacation spot? Discuss below!
