The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe
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4.1 • 90 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A high-powered Manhattan attorney finds love, purpose, and the promise of a simpler life in her grandmother's hometown.
Ellen Branford is going to fulfill her grandmother's dying wish -- to find the hometown boy she once loved, and give him her last letter. Ellen leaves Manhattan and her Kennedy-esque fiance for Beacon, Maine. What should be a one-day trip is quickly complicated when she almost drowns in the chilly bay and is saved by a local carpenter.
The rescue turns Ellen into something of a local celebrity, which may or may not help her unravel the past her grandmother labored to keep hidden. As she learns about her grandmother and herself, it becomes clear that a 24-hour visit to Beacon may never be enough. The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Café is a warm and delicious debut about the power of a simpler life.
"You will devour The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Café. Mary Simses can write evocative detail that puts you right in the scene, with dialogue that always rings true." -- James Patterson
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this bittersweet debut, Simses tells the story of Ellen Branford, who sets out to investigate her grandmother's mysterious past and ends up finding herself. As she lays dying, Ellen's grandmother extracts a promise from Ellen: that she will deliver a long-overdue apology letter to the man her grandmother jilted back home in Beacon, Maine, nearly six decades earlier. After leaving her fianc in Manhattan, Ellen heads to Beacon and promptly falls through a rotted pier. A strong rip current catches her and she is saved from drowning by local boy Roy Cummings, who pulls her to safety and lands them both on the front page of the local paper, gaining Ellen much notoriety as "the Swimmer." Fighting her budding feelings for Roy, Ellen digs deeper into her grandmother's past, unearthing not only her grandmother's jilted hometown crush but also a whole host of new questions. The answers that come to light will drive Ellen to make a choice that will change the course of her life.
Customer Reviews
The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe
Just loved this book. Nice little love story. Now I want to go make fresh blueberry muffins...wishing I was in Maine!
Loved every page
Just finished this book and I loved it. It was clean wholesome and fun to read. I loved the setting of the story and the was Mary described everything.
there were large parts of the story that just missed in a rush to make a happy ending
Starting out with this story, it does feel like it will transition comfortably to the screen: and be a standard entrant in that channel’s regular fare: nothing wholly exciting, happy-ish ending, where the setting and the underlying story are well suited to a passive hour or two of watching. Unfortunately, for me, the wholly dislikable heroine with her touch of superiority, her rather stereotypical view of small towns (which unfortunately was reinforced by the lack of place development – or compelling secondary characters) all served to form the framework for a mystery. Why did her grandmother stop painting and end up in Beacon?
Slow to engage, Ellen is one of those people that is sent on a quest to find her grandmother’s dying wish, with the delivery of a letter. A woman who seems to have made choices for her life by deciding which path would be most acceptable rather than intriguing, she’s caught up in the race for style points – as she defies logic and reason and sets out for Maine. But her arrival and plans to stay only a day are quickly shattered as she discovers a bit of mystery and seeks to unravel the clues.
Being honest, this book didn’t hold my attention – and the descriptions, while well written, seemed to have been picked from a tourism guide and were too glossy and generalized to give the town any flavor at all. While many people dream of a simpler life, and making that choice is not always the easy one, I just had too hard a time believing in Ellen’s journey and her choices – or perhaps her reasons for those choices: much like we aren’t really given her reasoning, there was little emotional connection to her grandmother’s story – or discovering what choices she faced – or why she chose what she did. Overall, this story was one that could be about anyone going to a small town from the big city, with only momentary flashes that brought interest or the place to life. Without development or real growth that felt palpable shown for Ellen, and an unbelievably dramatic transformation for her mother to caring and empathetic, there were large parts of the story that just missed in a rush to make a happy ending. A rush that left me hanging and wondering just how we arrived there.
I received an ebook copy of the title from the publisher for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.