Title: Sugar and Spice at the Pumpkin Corner Café
Author: Laura Briggs
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Rating: ★★★★☆
Source: Rachel’s Random Resources / Netgalley
Blurb: Professional pastry chef Blaire Reese is blindsided when her beloved Aunt Rachel dies, leaving her the Sugar and Spice Pastry Café in Willow Grove. Returning to her hometown, Blaire discovers her beloved family business is in trouble, and—to make things worse—its most-cherished recipe is missing.
Her first love and former summer crush, Evan Hadley, is also back in town, having traded a corporate career to help manage his family’s Heath Acre Farm, famous for its autumn Hay Daze corn maze. Grown up – and with rugged good looks – he’s only charming when he wants to be. Like when he’s not tangling with someone over business matters, the way he is with Blaire after she cancels a large order for organic pumpkins.
Her sunshine is disappearing under his grumpy storm clouds, until he accidentally learns the truth about her situation. Now, he offers to help save her aunt’s legacy and her family’s pastry cafe. As they work together in secret, the ingredients for a very different recipe develop— one simmering with romance—but an unexpected turn of events melts their growing attraction into a mess.
Will Blaire save the beloved cafe and find the lost recipe that means so much to the pastry café’s customers? And can she save this last chance at love with the first boy she ever kissed?
Review: This was my first read from this author and it won’t be my last. I absolutely loved its cosy, autumnal vibes and the lovely small town in which it’s set.
Heroine Blaire inherits a café following the death of her aunt, from whom she also inherited a love of baking. However, the café’s prize recipe has gone missing – I was a bit flummoxed as to how the cafe’s future depended on said recipe when its other offerings all sounded so tasty, but the story was intriguing enough to ignore that quibble.
Further tension is added when Blaire cancels an order… with the boy she once crushed on, now a handsome, albeit grumpy, man. Evan’s prickles hide a squidgy inside, though, and when he finds out about the missing recipe, he is very eager to help.
What I loved about Sugar and Spice is that Briggs didn’t rush Blaire and Evan’s romance. They develop a genuine friendship first, which slowly morphs into more. This made it a) more relatable than insta-lust and b) me root for them throughout.
I do have a warning about this book, though: it is NOT one to read if you’re dieting! Or, like me, diabetic. Because lord the food descriptions are incredible. I’d glad this was a Kindle book and I could wipe my drool off the screen.
There is no spice other than what goes into Blaire’s bakes. Not my preference, especially with a slow-burn romance, but I still really enjoyed this story and will look for more by Briggs.
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