Little Beach Street Bakery (Little Beach Street Bakery, #1)

by Jenny Colgan

[Leah]

In the past couple of years Jenny Colgan has really become an author I admire and enjoy. She’s started writing books that are mainly based around food – mostly the type of food I love, in fact, sweet food! A chocolate shop in Paris, Rosie Hopkins’s Sweetshop of Dreams, Cupcake Cafes… Her novels are so sweet that if you read too many of them in a row you may find yourself in a not-unwanted sugar coma. She’s also one of only a few authors who is giving us TWO novels a year, which is just amazing. I admire any author that can bring us two books per year, when let’s be honest, books normally take a year when there’s just one of them, so I have no idea how she does it, but I just hope she continues forevermore, because I can’t get enough. Her latest is Little Beach Street Bakery (I DARE you to guess what it’s about.)

Jenny says, quite simply, on the back of Little Beach Street Bakery that it has a very simple premise: Polly opens a bakery, and that is very true. But, also, there’s so much more to the novel than that! Polly doesn’t just open a bakery, but she sort of changes the way people in Polbearne think since she’s an interloper, renting a dilapidated, probably-should-be-condemened house, after a rough time with her ex, Chris, and their old business. She’s downsizing, and Polbearne is the best place to do it, if only Mrs Manse would stop treating her like a villian. Polly is quite a hit with the locals, when her bread-making skills sees everyone popping round to her house for a loaf every day, especially the local fisherman who spend every night out catching fish, to sell the next morning. Jenny is also right, mind, when she says it’s a novel about striking out on your own, and not letting your fears own you, and that sort of runs throughout the novel, for everyone involved. Every character we meet throughout Little Beach Street Bakery has their own fears and hopes, and it was nice to see some of them get to realise their dreams, despite their fears.

Little Beach Street Bakery was a delight in every sense of the word. I pretty much devoured it in just over 5 hours, because I was so enjoying being around everyone! Polbearne sounds like such a fantastic little place to live (I find myself saying this more and more, authors really do know where to set their books that make me dream of living there…) and I quite liked the fact that you could only leave if the tide dicatated you could. That’s ace. I loved how everyone welcomed Polly, except Mrs Manse, obviously, and I loved the immediate camrederie there was between Polly and between the fishermen, particularly Jayden and Tarnie. I loved reading about Polly’s baking – the loaves of bread sounded DELICIOUS and I can’t wait to try the cheese straws, or the plain white loaves, of which there are recipes in the back of the book. Polly and Jenny make it sound so easy to bake! But would you like to know what I loved most of all about the book? The puffin. Yes, Polly acquires a puffin, called Neil. There were just no words to describe my joy at Neil being present in the book. It made me smile like a loon, the way he acted like he was a pet not a wild bird, and I loved reading about it, it made my day. I decree that Jenny must now put puffins in all of her books, just because. Books can no longer be enjoyable if there isn’t a puffin present. I’m just saying.

I truly believe that Jenny Colgan gets so much better with every book of hers I read and I have no idea how she’s going to top Little Beach Street Bakery, unless there’s MILLIONS of puffins in the next one. I just enjoyed it so much! Polly was such a lovely, heart-warming character, and I loved to see her succeed and I loved how easily she cultivated relationships with everyone around her, especially Huckle. Yes, he has a silly name, but he’s a bee-keeper and makes honey, and is American and sounds delicious, so the name is forgiven. The book actually surprised me, because there was a sad strand to the novel, that I didn’t like at all, because it was quite gutting (NO, Neil the puffin didn’t die, jeez, you don’t kill off pets in books) and unexpected – this is a happy novel! So to see such tragedy was awful, and it just brought back a stark reminder of how real even novels can be! I really, really enjoyed Little Beach Street Bakery, and it’s given me a desperate craving for a good home-made loaf of bread, I really should know better by now than to read a Jenny Colgan novel on an emptyish stomach, because it never ends well. So before you read the novel, stock up on sweet treats, sit back and enjoy!