Cupcakes for Christmas

We are back in Wychwood-on-Lea this holiday season enjoying the wonderful story of Olivia James and Simon Blacklock. Olivia runs the village bakery where she and Simon first meet over a cupcake. He returns day after day until it feels like romance is is in the air. It might take a little holiday magic to get these two to take a chance on each other. This is a very well written book and I enjoyed these characters. I would definitely recommend this light quick holiday read.

Cupcakes for Christmas is book number one in the Willoughby Close series by Kate Hewitt. This is Olivia James and Simon Blacklock’s Story. This is a cute, sweet story and heartwarming quick read. Olivia runs a tea shop and meets Simon when he comes to her store and buys a cupcake then continues to come to buy cupcakes. They are attracted to each other but they each have other issues in their life that they are dealing with. Will these two take a chance on love or will hard knocks of life get in the way? I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.

I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion. 3 stars — Well, I ended up disappointed. This one just didn’t follow any formula I know, and I ended up feeling like I was slogging through the reading. Part of that is that the writing style isn’t a good match for me…it felt a bit verbose, and that’s not to my personal taste. Which is not to say it was badly written, I just have a low tolerance for that. It was also a very slow romance, and since we only had Olivia’s POV, it was very confusing and frustrating as well. Honestly, at times it felt more like women’s fiction than romance. This book tackled some interesting topics, but they left me feeling kind of down at the end of it. It tackles a few mental health issues, including Olivia’s mother getting older, and it did so in a very realistic way. Which isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes I want my fiction to have a bigger, clearer reward, and that was missing for me. The same for the other mental health topic tackled, which I can’t go into without spoilers. Olivia was a character I liked, but never really connected with. I’m not entirely sure I can pinpoint why, but I just never really empathized with her the way I should have. Which is not to say I didn’t feel for her struggles with loneliness and the changes in her life, but only to a degree I guess. As for Simon…well, I wanted to love him, but I just didn’t know a lot about him since we never got his POV, and he really wasn’t in the story enough. He was adorably awkward and dorky, and I was drawn to that. But he was also cryptic and unreliable, and so it made it hard to connect. And as such it made it hard to invest in their romance as well. I wanted to, but I just didn’t. There were some great sweet moments, but it just wasn’t enough. Perhaps if we’d gotten some answers earlier on and saw Olivia and Simon working through that, it would have worked for me more. So yeah. A lot to say that it was okay, but only okay.