I was on the line about whether to add this book to the "enjoyably bad" shelf, since I couldn't decide if it was actually bad. Cheesy, fluffy, and overly quirky, sure, but bad? Well, I'm on disc 5 now, and I've decided. It is bad. Still enjoyable, though.

What's best about this book: dead-on portrayal of bad love. The teenage main character and her mother each have a dumbass bad boy in their life that they can't seem to quit. The magnetism and idiocy of the boys and the addictive results of that More...

I bought this book two summers ago as a poolside read, and I remember really liking it. I laughed out loud quite a bit, and while I’m not one who seeks out humorous reads, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart was fun and refreshing.

However, after this, my second read-through, I’m going to have to say that this isn’t nearly as good as I’d though.

For one, it isn’t actually all that funny. Yes, the scenes with Poe, the destructive puppy were laughable, Ruby’s banter with her brother was cute, and the old folks More...

This is one of the greatest YA fiction novels I have ever read. I went into it with skeptism because the person who recommended the book to me loves stories where one of the lovers in a relationship dies at the end and I hate those sorts of stories.
This was a lot more than a story about summer love. In fact, I guess it is nothing about that. It's about love in general-- between family, friends, and your soul-mate. It's about finding and completing yourself not by someone else, but in yourself. More...

Ruby McQueen (aka. The Quiet One) lives in a small town known Nine Mile Falls with her mother is the town librarian and local elderly book club host. When she isn't hanging out with Sydney or working t the greenhouse with Libby, she keeps to herself because of two incidents. When she was younger, she broke her tailbone and had to use an inflatable doughnut to sit on. Well, needless to says, the kids in class gave her a hard time about it. The second humiliating moment of her life occurred when s More...

The book “Honey, Baby, Sweetheart" was overall an alright book. There’s a struggle between a boy that is a "bad boy" and a girl that is innocent and well very thoughtful of others opinions.

The authors purpose of the book “Honey, Baby, Sweetheart" is to show a love and bond between the two teenagers that no one can possibly understand. One other example of the author’s purpose in the story is that love can always find a way and that no one can break the bond between two people, even if they are More...

Once again Caletti has created a vividly adventurous (and humorous) home-spun coming of age story. My first Caletti novel was The Secret Life of Prince Charming and oh the characters! It's the same with Honey, Baby, Sweetheart. The characters are jewels...and the story is so familiar yet so enjoyable.
Ruby McQueen doesn't hang out with boys. She's a good girl, has one girlfriend, a love-sick insecure librarian mother, a little brother, and a chewing machine of a dog. Typical family, typical girl More...

My sister reviewed this book and made it sound so delicious, I had to get it. By the time it arrived, I had forgotten any of the details of her review--just a halo of "Dani" over the book--so I was expecting it to be really good.

I started reading, and it was kind of horrible. I kept going, getting more and more appalled, thinking, "She thought this was good?! What on earth am I going to say to her?" It was only when I interrupted my reading for a BBQ potato chip quest that I remembered: she she More...

Ruby McQueen is labelled as the 'quiet girl' - mostly invisible, never one to stand out in the crowd. But now it's summer, a chance to escape the labels and become who she wants to be so when she meets bad boy Travis she discovers a whole new side to herself. But things start to go too far when Travis gets her to help him break in and steal. Ruby's mum decides she needs to be pulled away from Travis and distracted so she brings her along to her book group- "The Casserole Queens" a group of fairl More...

Honey, Baby, Sweetheart follows an interesting series of events. There is a distinct division between the first half of the book and the second half.

Ruby McQueen is curious -- there is this magnificent house on Cummings Road that intrigues her. Then she spots Travis, the older teen of the household -- who rides an awesome motorcycle and seems so confident, handsome, well-bred and casual in what Ruby thinks is the reality of being upper class. She is amazed when he pays attention to her -- calli More...

What I liked most was the love and self discovery in this book. Have you ever fallen in love with a boy who is just all wrong for you. He gets you to lie, do bad things and even almost gets you seriously hurt?

The MC discover who she really is and not who the boy defines her as. Ruby meets a boy who not only make her fall fast but he knows it as well. Ruby thinks that because age loves him she can't be who she is. Her mother is a great role. She has been through a lot and shows Ruby what love re More...

Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti- 308 pages
In the book Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, by Deb Caletti, Ruby Mc Queen, the protagonist, is 16 years old and lives in the small town of Nine Mile Falls, Texas with her mom, Ann and her brother, Chip Jr. Her dad, Chip had left her family a little after Chip Jr. was born hoping for luck in the music business. Ann still loved Chip and so whenever he came to visit, she would be in a great mood and buy expensive food for them, even though it was hard becau More...

I've read this book several months ago and I didn't particularly enjoy it. The writing style is pretty good, but I had a problem with the characters and the way the author tells her story - like it's a cautionary tale and it should teach teenagers what to avoid in life and how to behave. I absolutely hate it when the author tries to teach the readers a lesson! The moral of this tale is simple : you shouldn't let other people influence you in a bad way, you shouldn't value your boyfriend's opinio More...

The characters in this book are Ruby McQueen, Travis Becker, Her Mom, and Her Mom's Book Club. Ruby is a very ordinary girl, who falls in and out of love with Travis very quickly. Travis is the charming, gorgeous and dangerous boy that lives down the street. He's always doing everything that he shouldn't be doing. Ruby's mom is always trying to do the right thing for her. She introduced her to her book club, and Ruby joins right away. It helps to get her mind off of Travis and all of the bad thi More...

The Quiet Girl. That’s the label to which Ruby McQueen’s been reduced. She’s content enough to live with it until she meets Travis Becker. Dangerous, dreamy, rich boy Travis who goes to a private school and thus knows nothing about Ruby. It’s shocking how easily and suddenly reserved, good-girl Ruby can become the reckless, risk-taker Travis thrives on. He pushes her beyond her limits time and time again, but frankly she could use the distraction. With Ruby’s free-spirited, musician father final More...

When Ruby McQueen walks through the gates of the Becker Estate one summer during high school and receives her first tantalizing grin from the infamous Travis Becker, she knows her world is about to change. Travis exudes danger and adventure, but not of the kind Ruby is prepared for. As his daring actions prove greater threats and consequences, Ruby finds herself broken in a way she never expected to become. But the pieces of her shame are put back together with the Casserole Queens, a group of f More...

In the small town of Nine Mile Falls, 16 year old, Ruby McQueen is very ordinary and quiet...until she started hanging out with the handsome, rich, thrill-seeking, biker, Travis Becker. Ruby soon falls head over heals for him but soon realizes she is risking more and more when she's with him. Ruby's mother drags Ruby to her weekly Senior book club to keep her occupied and Ruby discovered that one of the group members is the subject of a tragic love story the book club is reading. Ruby is determi More...

“Right away I got that Something About To Happen feeling. Right away I knew he was bad, and that it didn’t matter.”

I’m a sucker for a great road trip story. There’s just something so intriguing about being on the road for long periods of time. So when my sister suggested this book to me, I was excited to jump into it right away. This book literally took me most of June to finish because that’s how much I could not get into the story line. Out of 308 pages, I hit 200 yesterday and that was when i More...

Let me start off by saying that I am a huge Deb Caletti fan. I love all of the things everyone else loves about her books.

That said, I find it shocking that this is the only one of her books that has gotten recognition from the National Book Award. Frankly, I found it way too easy to put this book down and go days without picking it up again; there were too many characters I didn't care about, and Ruby is no more insightful of a narrator than Cassie, Jade, Scarlett, Quinn, Clara or Cricket. Not More...

I didn't love this book. It has my kind of ring to it: good girl falls for the bad boy, mixed in with a mom-librarian, and a troupe of insane old people bustled together in some sort of strange road trip adventure. . . but I still didn't like it. The side characters were spectacular. The story within the story, lost love between a writer and a poet, was beautiful. But the actual story was lackluster to me. I couldn't love Ruby or her unlovable bad boy Travis. Every scene that pitted them togethe More...

I was hoping for a story about first love. This is something else entirely. More about how a young woman can be pressured into doing something she doesn't want to to do and knows is wrong so that her love interest will continue to pay attention to her. Even though he's a complete ass, a rich, spoiled brat who doesn't appear to give a damn about her. A secondary plot line involves the girl's mother, who is finally coming to realize just how awful the man she married is. The author has a sort of c More...

I don't often dislike books but this one I truly had a difficult time completing. I started skimming through this book towards the middle of the book when I realized it was not getting any better. I didn't want to just abandon it as I've never ever abandoned a book before so I skimmed it all the way to the end. It was just really sad that I found this book boring and insignificant. I didn't find any of the characters appealing or interesting enough to follow their stories. I just didn't connect More...

First of all I would normally not be particularly interested in a book called "Honey, Baby, sweetheart" because it sounds like your run of the mill revoltingly cutesy romance, but alas this was not the case. I have read other novels by Deb Caletti and I have found them not only intensely satisfying but also very emotionally riveting. I would certainly not label this book the pinnacle point in her writing career but the story did contain some, dare I say, beautiful qualities. The complexity of th More...

Ruby McQueen's summer is not turning out at all like she'd thought it would - this "Quiet Girl" is managing to be loud in all sorts of unexpected ways. There so much about this book, and these characters that I loved - Ruby was as real to me as a fictional character can be: Sixteen year old NTE was right there with her while she did all sorts of stupid things, not knowing how to make herself stop. There was the relationship between Ruby and her mother, Ann, which felt so true that it almost hurt More...

Hmmm...
My biggest problem with this book was the first 115 pages. Caletti beautifully establishes the setting, her protagonist, and the protagonist's love interest, but it just takes so damn long! I kept wondering when the story was going to start, and I was afraid it was going to be 300 pages of bad choices this girl keeps making with her love interest. I have enough of those in my own life! But THEN... a few pages too late, in my opinion, she introduces an old lady (and one old man) book club. More...

I have mixed feelings about my first Deb Caletti read.

I loved the idea of this book ~ the Quiet Girl and the rich, wild boy and one summer where everything goes a little crazy.

I also loved portions of the prose. Every now and then a sentence/paragraph/sentiment would just be perfectly captured ~ you could highlight this little book like crazy with all those hidden gems.

Unfortunately, those gems do get hidden ~ drowning in often over-written passages. If I were to edit this book I would pare it r More...

The unavoidable factor that underlies all of Deb Calleti's books is their uniqueness. Sometimes, the uniqueness is good - streamlined writing, interesting characters that are not too quirky, and a well-defined plot. Other times, it is bad. This was one of the bad ones.

This being my third book by Deb Calleti, I was not quite sure what to expect. One of her other books I had given two stars, while her most recent novel I had given five. On the other hand, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart is a National Book More...

I picked this up to save me from the fake depression I was about to have from reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and I expected it to be light, to be basically just of the happies, but obviously, it wasn't. At first, you'd think it was a story about a good quiet girl falling for a bad loud guy, but that was just the surface plot. It dug deeper into family and friendship ties, even up to bridging connections between the young and old generations. I did like the way it was written but there were More...

This book has a misleading title and cover. I never would have read it if I hadn't read this review written by my friend Chachic. This is a book about breaking out of destructive cycles, learning from your mistakes, and second chances. It is not just Ruby's story but also her mother's story and the story of the Casserole Queens. I liked the multi-generational relationships portrayed in the novel. The commentary on women and their motivations for seeking love is spot on, if a little didactic. Thi More...