The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe

by Mary Simses

[Leah]

When I received a proof copy of The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop and Cafe to review, I thought it looked like a beautiful book. In fact, it has such a lovely cover, that I wanted to eat it what with the delicious looking berries and jam on the cover. The back cover doesn’t have the synopsis on, so I wasn’t sure at all what the novel was about. Sometimes, though, that can be great because sometimes synopses give away too much information and it’s nice sometimes to just read a book without knowing anything about the novel at all. I was really interested to read the novel, but sadly it didn’t live up to what I expected of it, which was a shame.

For the most part, The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop and Cafe (Jesus, what a title!) is a very readable novel. But with a title that relates to a cafe, you sort of expect the book to resolve around a cafe. And I was really excited to read a book set in a cafe! But, no. The novel has very little to do with a cafe. Yes, it rears it’s head up on a couple of occasions, but I’d expected it to be the main feature so I was quite disappointed. Blueberries are a feature of the novel, and the title does tie-in, it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be about. Instead the novel is basically about Ellen Branford, who after her grandmother dies, heads to her old home town of Beacon, located in Maine, in a bid to treck down Chet Cummings, a man related to Ellen’s grandmother. But what Ellen learns about her grandmother isn’t what she expected at all, and as she and Roy Cummings, Chet’s newphew, discover more about their relatives lives, who knows just how this visit will shake Ellen’s foundations and her life as she knows it.

The novel actually reminded me of another novel, but I’m not actually sure what that novel was. It reminds me a bit of Dancing Naked In Dixie by Lauren Clark, but I suspect there’s another novel I think it reminds me of but I have no idea what it is! I thought the novel started really well, as we see Ellen take a dive in the dock at Beacon, and almost drowns and ends up getting saved by Roy Cummings. It’s quite the fast-paced start to the novel and I was chuffed to see where it would go. But, sadly, the novel didn’t hold my interest all the way through. It was an interesting story, and I enjoyed bits of it; I’m a massive fan of small-town America and love reading about all the little towns that inhabit America. Beacon sounded idyllic, and I wanted to move there immediately, with it’s quaint hotel and blueberry fields (even if they weren’t in use any more), and the beautiful historical society. There was just so much to the town and I loved all the people.

My problem with the novel was Ellen. I liked her at times, don’t get me wrong, but for someone who’s supposedly a hot-shot NY lawyer, she was a bit dim; missing the ‘No Trespassing’ sign at the beginning of the novel, and she just seemed to make some daft, rather rash, decisions. I enjoyed her relationship with Roy, though it did make me feel a tad sorry for Hayden, Ellen’s fiance. He wasn’t a bad guy and he didn’t do anything terrible, so I was quite sad for him because it was quite obvious where Ellen and Roy’s relationship was heading. I think this novel will have its fans, and it wasn’t a bad book, to be fair, I just expected it to be a different kind of novel, with a title that says The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop and Cafe. If Ellen had been a bit smarter, I’d have loved the novel, but a few daft decisions made the fact she’s a lawyer seem a bit strange, lawyers are meant to be much smarter, I suppose. But it had its moments, I’ll give it that and I loved the small-town of Beacon, Maine.