What they say: The Little Duck Pond Cafe girls are looking forward to a well-earned break in the Cornish seasidetown of Pengully Sands, where Sylvia’s sister, Aggie, owns a holiday home.
With the glorious golden sands, sparkling azure sea and an ice-cream parlour only yards away, it seems like the perfectlocation to relax and watch the surfers riding the waves (and maybe even have a go themselves).
But when they arrive, the girls find it’s not quite the seaside idyll they were expecting. The house is less ‘holiday home’ and more ‘creepy, dilapidated haunted house.’ Gracie, who runs the ice-cream parlour, has problems of her own andthe last thing she needs is a bunch of high-spirited girls arriving to disturb the peace and isolation she craves. And when a handsome stranger looks set to destroy her livelihood, it seems like the last straw. Will Gracie get her happy ending-and maybeeven make friends with the girls next-door? This wasn’t the relaxing break the Little Duck Pond Cafe girls were expecting, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be the holiday of a lifetime!
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The Review: There are some series that I absolutely delight in because for me they’re like comfort food, warm, satisfying and, like the name suggests, a source of comfort. Add the fact that I continuously cast my eye back to those beautiful, mesmerising covers and you can see why I’m hooked!!
This was probably my favourite Duck Pond Cafe book to date. I loved the idea of a holiday and adored that they were visiting somewhere as beautiful as Pengully sands and was quickly taken by the pov of a new character, that of Gracie, who is trying to keep her mother’s dream of an ice cream parlor going, while also battling some secrets, all the while making me feel for a horrendous tragedy that really shocked me. Add to this a haunted house and I was wide eyed and nodding from start to finish as I placed myself amid stunning scenery, with drama coming at us left, right and centre.
I’ll admit there was a lot of ‘suspend disbelief’ moments for me (the length of time they were there, the theme of renovating and Gracie’s bombshell being the big ones) and I was also confused from time to time at the nitty gritty of the two houses, but it totally didn’t matter. As I said, my favourite book to date. An absolute stunner that you have to read!! Thanks so much to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for the book in return for an honest review and for allowing me to be part of the blog tour.
Rating:5/5
About the author
Rosie has been scribbling stories ever since she was little. Back then, they were rip-roaring adventure tales with a young heroine in perilous danger of fallingoff a cliff or being tied up by ‘the baddies’. Thankfully, Rosie has moved on somewhat, and now much prefers to write romantic comedies that melt your heart and make you smile, with really not much perilous danger involved at all-unless youcount the heroine losing her heart in love. Her series of novellas is centred around life in a village cafe. The latest, ‘Lemon Drizzle Mondays atthe Little Duck Pond Cafe’, is out now. Rosie is currently writing a full-length book, ‘Lucy’s Great Cornish Escape’, which–in a fun twist–will feature favourite characters from the Little Duck Pond Café series.
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