The Little Duck Pond Cafe girls are looking forward to a well-earned break in the Cornish seaside town 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 perfect location 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 and the 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 maybe even 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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Review
Sometimes what you want isn't what you get, but you might just get what you need. In this cheerful summer read, the girls of the Little Duck Pond Cafe and a few others learn this lesson. Friends and family, both new and old, abound, along with ice-cream, cake, and a splash of romance.
This story follows two lines - Gracie, who is trying to run her mother's old ice-cream parlour, and the high-spirited Cafe girls who move in next door. As the two are set on the two cottages on a Cape, their stories are literally concurrent and manage to fit together well. Gracie's story is a story about hope, family, and moving on while still honouring the past, whereas the cafe girls all have their own stories in various stages. It did mean that, coming into what is obviously a series, the sudden influx of characters and all their associated problems and stories did get a little overwhelming. They start almost in media res and some of the plots are not wrapped up by the end. It is still an enjoyable read, but you gotta be prepared to sit back and absorb it all. I did have a few quibbles with the story continuity but those can be explained away by a few character having very poor reading comprehension.
As it was such lighthearted fun, I'm instead interested in reading the back catalogue, as it seems like the stories at the Little Duck Pond Cafe are quite charming - once you get a handle on who everyone is!
Four stars
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Rachel's Random Resources, all opinions are my own.
Author BioRosie 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 falling off 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 you count the heroine losing her heart in love.
Her series of novellas is centred around life in a village cafe. The latest, ‘Lemon Drizzle Mondays at the 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.
Follow Rosie on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Rosie_Green1988
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