Cupcakes for Christmas

Three and a half stars. It's nearly Christmas and Olivia James is feeling a little melancholy. All her friends are happily married and planning new futures, her mother has moved into assisted living accommodation in Witney and her cake shop/cafe is struggling to stay in the black. Then a chance encounter with a stranger brings some Christmas hope and magic into her heart. But in the real world things aren't always fairy lights and tinsel, there are problems and family and other issues. This was a super sweet fun read where Olivia finds her own Christmas joy, despite a somewhat rocky road. Warning, the descriptions of the cupcakes Olivia makes as part of her Twelve Days of Christmas Cupcakes campaign will make dieting hard and could lead to tooth decay just reading them! I read someone else's comment on another Kate Hewitt book about Americanisms creeping into her books and I have to say there were a couple here too. First, I don't know what Angel Hair pasta is, having googled it is Capellini, not something that I would ordinarily buy from Waitrose, secondly in the UK cider is alcoholic and so unsuitable for children or people who want a non-alcoholic beverage. But these are more gripes for the publisher than real issues with the novel. So, does the fact that the cottages in Willoughby Close are soon to be empty signal a new set of tenants?

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.

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.