★★★★★ The Swing Time Soda Emporium by Earl L Carlson is a bittersweet celebration of love, family, and life in middle America in the war years and afterward. Throckmorton Dalrymple Pennington-Jones (or Morty to his friends) had been in love with Poppy Jablonsky for as long as he could remember. Poppy was a law unto herself; strong, independent, and fiercely rebellious. She and her two friends, Cinderella Killian and Trixie Brindle, are the founding members of a club called the “Bare Ass Society,” in which they frequently resolve to go around without wearing any underwear. The center of attraction for the young people in town is the Swing Time Soda Emporium run by the mysterious Sly Willie James. Here, they could find good sodas, hamburgers, plenty of hi-jinks, and most importantly of all, music for the young people to dance to, especially the “Swing Craze” that had swept the country. Sly Willy’s jukebox is the glue that holds the youth of the town together, drawing even the wealthy kids from the other side of the tracks. When Poppy is mysteriously killed by a person or persons unknown, all her friends are devastated, however, none more so than Morty, who is a broken young man. The reappearance of Poppy as both a guardian angel and an avenging angel gives the novel an exciting twist.

The Swing Time Soda Emporium is a joyful celebration of a time that has long passed, a simpler time, but also a time when children came of age and discovered the same things that children today discover: friendship, love, sex, disappointment, sadness, anger, and sometimes the cruelty of the real world outside of their protected childhood. Author Earl L Carlson has created a delicious cast of characters that could have come straight from “Central Casting”; Morty, the quiet, socially inept and awkward young man; Poppy, the free-spirited leader who despite her fierce outlook actually has a heart of gold and just wants to mend broken people; Trixie, the abused and gorgeous young woman who is just looking for a sense of belonging; Cinderella, the dancing queen; and Sly Willie whose mysterious appearance in the town several years ago clearly hides an interesting backstory. What the author manages to do so brilliantly is to weave these characters into a fascinating mystery that will keep readers guessing as to the ultimate perpetrator of Poppy’s demise. Two aspects that lift this story above the average coming-of-age tale are the period and the concentration on the swing music of the time and the impact it had on an entire generation, as well as the supernatural element of Poppy’s reappearance as an angel of sorts. In many ways, these young people were the lucky generation in that although they understood there was a war going on, and local boys were dying, they would be spared the dangers of direct involvement. What the Swing Time Soda Emporium did for them was create a safe sense of community where they could truly let their inhibitions down. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and highly recommend it.

— Grant Leishman, Readers’ Favorite

★★★★★ The Swing Time Soda Emporium by Earl L Carlson opens at a funeral and somehow becomes one of the funniest love stories you will come across. Throckmorton "Morty" narrates his beloved Poppy Jablonsky's burial in a state of devastated grief, having left her years earlier under bitter circumstances, only to discover that Poppy has no intention of staying dead and gone. She returns to him that same night, ghostly, sharp-tongued, and exactly as alive in personality as she ever was. The story winds backward into their childhood at the titular soda shop in 1947, through the founding of the unforgettable Bare-Ass Society, Poppy's legendary ladder-climbing showdown with bully Charley Joe Wiggins, and the friendships with Trixie and Cinderella that shaped them both, all while the present-day mystery of how Poppy actually died, and why she has come back, simmers underneath every scene.

Earl L Carlson writes with an unapologetic sense of humor that never lets the sentimentality curdle into sappiness. The dialogue between Morty and the dead-but-not-gone Poppy crackles with genuine wit; her line about being his "guardian angel" had me laughing out loud. The pace moves briskly between past and present, and the narrative structure rewards readers' patience as old nicknames and inside jokes slowly reveal their meaning. Poppy is a magnificent character, foul-mouthed, fearless, and utterly unsentimental even in death, while Morty's grief feels achingly real underneath the comedy. The themes of love outlasting death and friendship shaping a person more than blood give The Swing Time Soda Emporium an unexpected heart. This is a genuinely original, big-hearted novel that earns both its laughs and its tears.

— Mansoor Ahmed, Readers’ Favorite Editorial Review

★★★★★ The Swing Time Soda Emporium by Earl L. Carlson is set in 1947 Idaho, where Morton “Morty” D. Jones attends the funeral of Poppy Jablonsky, the woman he had loved since kindergarten, after her body is found in a creek. That night, Poppy appears in his apartment as a ghost and tells him she was struck from behind on the bridge. She does not know who killed her, but she refuses to let Morty accept the story that everyone else has accepted. As Poppy stays near him, Morty must look again at the childhood promise that tied them together, the marriage that made her his wife, and the nursing incident that drove them apart before her death. Their past holds the path toward the truth, but Poppy’s return changes what Morty understands about love, loyalty, and justice.

Earl L. Carlson’s The Swing Time Soda Emporium is a wonderful historical novel, and while the speculative elements and mystery are brilliant, the standout to me is the characters and period details. Early mid-century America comes to life with wartime rationing that affects a 1945 prom through scarce stockings, while Poppy’s Cadet Nurse Corps path links her to the effort and era. Morty is likeable as the first-person narrator, and there's a protectiveness about him that extends to others, including a cheerleader terrified of gossip. I just love, love, love Sly Willy James, the Black soda shop owner who teaches dance, and whose Savoy Ballroom and sorrowful past show why the Swing Time is more than a business. Readers who enjoy stories that transcend time and dabble in the metaphysical will adore this book.

— Jamie Michele, Readers’ Favorite Editorial Review

★★★★★ The Swing Time Soda Emporium by Earl L Carlson is a terrific coming-of-age story in the 1940s, narrated by the eccentric Throckmorton “Morty” Dalrymple Pennington-Jones, who takes readers on a ride through his lifelong devotion to Poppy Jablonsky. Poppy is a feisty tomboy Morty has loved since kindergarten. She is the kind of person who enlivens people’s lives and helps others put themselves back together when they are broken. Their lives evolve through mischief and secret clubs like the “Bare-Ass Society” and memorable friends who stick together through adolescence, wartime deprivations, swing-dance culture, high-school prom, and their eventual marriage. When tragedy strikes, everyone misses Poppy while Morty’s overwhelming grief is interrupted by her return as a self-aware, wisecracking ghost who refuses to abandon him and his friends.

Earl L Carlson fills The Swing Time Soda Emporium with memorably idiosyncratic characters; the bookish Morty is one who grabbed my attention from the get-go and never loosened his grip for a moment. You also have the sexually confident yet utterly protective Poppy, who affects those around her, the towering dance prodigy Cinderella, and Sly Willy, whose Jazz Age history as a Chicago dancer slowly reveals itself. The pacing is deliberate, and it lingers over swing rhythms, sensory details of rosewater scent, and first kisses, before jumping across decades to unveil hidden connections and Poppy’s posthumous guardian angel assignments. The narrative voice is quirky, like the characters and the situations they find themselves in, and the humor is infused even in small things like how Morty got his long, difficult-to-pronounce name. The ribald wit balances the exacting pathos, especially after Poppy’s murder. This is a book about sexual awakening, loyalty, and a newfound family that captures transitional post-war America where youth culture changes from big-band swing to drive-ins.

— Romuald Dzemo, Readers’ Favorite Editorial Review

★★★★ The Swing Time Soda Emporium, by Earl L. Carlson, is a coming-of-age novel set in small-town 1940s America, following Morty Pennington-Jones and his incandescent circle of friends as they orbit the local soda shop, swing music, first love, sexual awakening, war’s aftershocks, and one impossible romance that refuses to end at the grave. At its center is Poppy Jablonsky, a sharp-tongued, unruly, unforgettable girl whose death opens the book but does not remove her from the story. What begins as nostalgia soon bends into a ghost story, murder mystery, romantic remembrance, and a meditation on how youth becomes memory.

I found the novel most alive when it let its characters talk, tease, quarrel, flirt, and philosophize in the warm clutter of the Swing Time itself. The book has a rangy, old-fashioned confidence, the kind that is willing to wander down side streets because it trusts the company is good. Morty’s voice is comic, wounded, and self-mocking, often all in the same breath, and Poppy is written with enough voltage to make her supernatural return feel less like a gimmick than a continuation of her personality. She was never going to exit politely.

What stayed with me was the book’s odd mixture of ribald comedy and genuine grief. It can be bawdy, sentimental, discursive, and surprisingly tender, sometimes within a single page. The sexual frankness won’t suit every reader, but it’s part of the book’s argument that adolescence is not cleanly separable from embarrassment, longing, curiosity, and danger. Beneath the jokes and the jukebox glow, the novel keeps circling a harder truth: the people who shape us most completely may also leave us most unfinished.

This book is best suited for adult readers who enjoy historical fiction, coming-of-age fiction, small-town fiction, ghost stories, romantic drama, nostalgia fiction, literary humor, and swing-era fiction. Readers who like the remembered-youth tenderness of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but want it filtered through the irreverent wit of Mark Twain may find much to enjoy here. The Swing Time Soda Emporium is a bighearted, foul-mouthed, jazz-haunted valentine to youth, memory, and the stubborn afterlife of first love.