by Kelly

This haiku review is a bit of a stretch, but if you stick it out, you’ll discover why it’s here.

The book, Sweet Misfortune by Kevin Alan Milne, isn’t about haiku. It’s a about a woman named Sophie who owns a chocolate shop.

Sophie is rather unlucky in love. After her most recent break up she decides to transform her bitterness into cookies. She makes a batch of fortune cookies but instead of penning reassuring good wishes for the future, she writes pessimistic notes like, “Yesterday was the high point in your life. Sorry.”

Sophie’s “misfortune cookies” turn out to be quite popular with her customers, but there is one man who doesn’t like them. He is the man who wants to win Sophie’s heart. Can he convince her that all her misfortune in love is behind her?

Sounds like a bona fide chic flick, doesn’t it? That’s probably why I fell so easily into the story, and why I just kept right on reading late into the night. This would have been a perfect beach/airplane read. Unfortunately in my case, it was the perfect I’m-sick-in-bed book. But being sick in bed wasn’t all bad. I did, after all, get to read a fun book.

And now here’s where I get to the haiku part. All the way at the end of Sweet Misfortune is the author’s acknowledgments page, which is written in haiku.

“I’m certainly no poet (as you’ll soon see), but putting my thoughts and feeling into this format was way more fun, and considerably less stressful, than crafting boring old sentences,” Mr. Milne wrote before going on to list several haiku about those who helped deliver this book from brainstorm to market. For example:

Sharp eyes reading quick:

Gram, Mom, Kacie, Becca, Jen –

Family with red pens.

And so, yet again, haiku makes a surprise appearance in my life. See, haiku is everywhere…