Blog Tour: The Little Teashop in Tokyo by Julie Caplin

Grab your passport and escape to a land of dazzling skycrapers, steaming bowls of comforting noodles, and a page-turning love story that will make you swoon!

For travel blogger Fiona, Japan has always been top of her bucket list so when she wins an all-expenses paid trip, it looks like her dreams are coming true.

Until she arrives in vibrant, bustling Tokyo and comes face-to-face with the man who broke her heart ten years ago, gorgeous photographer Gabe.

Fiona can’t help but remember the heartache of their last meeting but amidst the temples and clouds of soft pink cherry blossoms, can Fiona and Gabe start to see life – and each other – differently?

Purchase Links
UK - https://amzn.to/39JCFL9   
US - http://amzn.to/39QbGhh

Review

This is a gorgeous, slow-build romance about photography, family, and wonder

Fiona has just won the trip of a lifetime - two weeks in Japan that could launch her photography career to the next level. Her hypochondriac mother is worried but Fiona's sure she'll be fine - until she discovers her mentor for the next fortnight is an old crush who unwittingly sparked teenage Fiona's social isolation. Gabe is a big name in photography, but since his muse married another man, he no longer finds joy behind a camera. This unexpected mentorship is an unwelcome burden, but Fiona challenges him and refuses to let him phone it in - and why does she seem so familiar?

While this story was slow to start, the more sedate pace fits the very Japanese juxtaposition of  antiquity against modernity. It's clear the author loves Japan, for the prose is full of Japanese culture, history, and traditions as explained to Fiona, the audience surrogate. As the beauty of nature and tradition settles and enchants Fiona, we also fall in love.

Gabe, on the other hand, does not make a sterling first impression. He's not in a good place and hasn't been for a while, but Fiona's joy in discovery and her earnest appreciation of Japan captivates him and for the first time in too long, has him itching to take a photo. He does, with the best of intentions, pull a startlingly terrible stunt on Fiona at 80% through the book, and I'd have liked to see a bit more grovel instead of the narrative supporting his actions.

There's a small cast of supporting characters - mainly three generations of women in the family who host Fiona in Tokyo - and each are wonderfully different but well written. With Fiona's friends, I sort of feel like there's a book or two previous that I've missed, but this novel is wonderfully self-contained on its own.

Also, it makes Tupperware romantic. Tupperware. I think that deserves a mention all on its own!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley; all opinions are my own

Author Bio

Jules Wake announced at the age of ten that she planned to be a writer. Along the way she was diverted by the glamorous world of PR and worked on many luxury brands, taking journalists on press trips to awful places like Turin, Milan, Geneva, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and occasionally losing the odd member of the press in an airport. This proved fabulous training for writing novels as it provided her with the opportunity to eat amazing food, drink free alcohol, hone her writing skills on press releases and to research European cities for her books.
She writes best-selling warm-hearted contemporary fiction for HarperImpulse.
Under her pen name, Julie Caplin, her thirteenth novel, The Little Teashop in Tokyo will be published in ebook and paperback this June.

Social Media Links
Twitter @JulieCaplin
@Juleswake
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JulieCaplinAuthor