Sweet Misfortune: A Novel

Kevin Alan Milne
Center Street (2010)
ISBN 9781599952970
Reviewed by Tracey Rock for Reader Views (06/10)


On a rainy night in September, nine-year-old Sophie Jones sat looking on as paramedics pry open the crushed door of the Volvo she was inside just minutes earlier.  This car accident, as she knew, has just claimed the life of her parents and grandmother.  Her hand still clung to the piece of paper from the fortune cookie she had at dinner.   She looked down reading her fortune, “Happiness is a gift that shines within you.  The wish of your heart will soon come true.”  At that moment, Sophie had only two thoughts:  The accident was her fault and fortune cookies aren’t real.  Now, twenty years later, Sophie still carries around guilt and regret of that night.  In place of love and happiness, Sophie enjoys cynicism and a belief that happiness doesn’t exist.  As the owner of a candy store, Sophie is best known in town for making Misfortune Cookies.  Each misfortune cookie is filled with a handwritten note predicting disappointment and heartache.   “A healthy dose of reality for those of us who’ve been around the block enough times to know that happiness is just an illusion” Sophie exclaims. 

As fate would have it, on this September evening, Sophie’s ex-boyfriend comes into her shop. “What would it take, he asks, to get you to agree to one date?”  Sophie, feeling clever and dubious, tells him that if he puts a want ad in the local paper with just the words, “Wanted. Happiness” and if he can get one hundred people to respond to his ad with something intelligent, then she would go on a date with him.  A local television station picked up the story and soon the story was broadcast all over the country.  Responses to the ad began pouring in.  After trudging through boxes and piles of letters, there was one letter that caught her eye.  There was nothing special about it other than the sheer fact that it seemed lighter than the rest of the letters.  As she opened the letter, Sophie knew instantly what it was.  Looking at the small faded wrinkled fortune in her hand, she tearfully read it: “Happiness is a gift that shines within you.  The wish of your heart will soon come true.”  It was the exact fortune Sophie clung to as she sat and watch her parents be taken away by paramedics twenty years ago.   At that moment every painful memory of her life without her parents came back to her.  Then another memory came to mind.  Sophie just realized that she never mentioned the fortune to anyone.  So who could have sent this to her and why?

I thought this book was a good light read.  I found “Sweet Misfortune” to be well written overall but I didn’t particularly care for the ending.  I would have rather have seen the characters developed a little bit better before it ended so I didn’t quite connect.  I think what drew me into this book were the misfortune cookies (I’m a cynic too and liked the concept) and the ad that Garrett places asking about happiness.  There is this curiosity to want to know how other people view happiness.  The real underlying message went deeper than that though.  Picture one single tragic event and the perception of what actually occurred by those most impacted by it.  How they cope and live after the event is interesting and is relatable in some ways.  There is always more than one side of a story and Kevin Milne does make this point quite well.

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