Hello, hello…

Laurie Gilmore’s “The Pumpkin Spice Cafe” was all over my FYP ( for you page ) on TikTok for a while, but having a million other books already on my TBR ( to be read ) I hadn’t added it yet. Until one of my friends gifted it to me.

The story follows Jeanie Ellis, a young woman who’s working as a personal assistant. Her whole life is her work and somehow ended up with zero social life, zero friends and zero boyfriend. When one day she found her boss dead on his desk from a heart attack, her whole world turned upside down. She was desperate for a change and that opportunity came when her aunt Dot retired and left Jeanie her cafe in the small town where she was living.

Jeanie left everything behind and moved to Dream Harbor to become the manager of “The Pumpkin Spice Cafe”. But Jeanie’s plans don’t actually go as she was imagining. The cafe ( and the small apartment above ) seems to be haunted and she’s terminated to find out what is the reason of all those scary noises.

When she meets Logan Anders, the local farmer who supplies her cafe, he offers his help with her situation ( even if he did it mostly because the whole town made him ).

My thoughts ( beware of mini spoilers ):

I really liked this book! Gilmore’s characters are so real that you’ll find yourself recognizing yourself in one of them for sure. And if it’s not the always cheerful Jeanie, it will be the grumpy Logan. Or the sweet Hazel, or even Annie who always complains about the mysterious Mac. Or Noah… who literally leaves his life to the fullest without caring about others may say ( or he does? ).

I liked that we see that Jeanie and Logan like each other immediately but they try ( and fail ) to stay away from each other. The way that she wrote about Logan’s past trauma of abandonment and how this was the main problem in their relationship was great.

I loved that she didn’t use the “love healed him” bullshit… because let’s be real. Most ( if not all ) of the time love isn’t enough if you don’t work with yourself to heal. He went to a psychologist, and he tried, eventually healing himself. Yes, love and a person can be the reason to make us realize that we need help. But we can’t put that burden on that person’s shoulder. It’s not their job to heal us. So, well done Laurie.

The storyline about the person who wanted to make Jeanie leave makes complete sense to me and I had to figure out the “bad guy” from the start. It was a small extra on making interested an already nice book. I found that person’s reason very reasonable and I’m glad that we saw a glimpse of that ending of the story.

I grew up in a village and I know the feeling when people don’t mind their own business, so the residents of Dream Harbor are something familiar to me. At first, I was annoyed with them and the fact that they were trying to put their noses in other people’s business. Something that shocked me though was that just because of this feeling, the whole vibe of the book was so familiar that I loved it!

If you like small-town romance, with a little bit of spicy and drama-free books this one is a must for you.

I give it a 4/5 stars and can’t wait to dive in on the whole series of Gilmore’s. ( The series has two more books published and more to come ).

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Until next time…