Genre: Chick Lit
Published: 2014
Pages: 421 with bonus recipes/material
Polly has had it with her failed business that she started with her boyfriend (and that, too, was failing). So she moves to the old, dreary island of Mount Polbearne to start over completely. Maybe coming here wasn't a good idea after all.
Then she rekindles her hobby of baking bread, and soon she finds herself earning her keep at a local bakery. Everything else falls into place, from new friends to a new love interest who provides the honey for her treats. But Polly's business really starts heating up after disaster strikes. Polly will soon realize that not only is the town changing her, but that she will bring change to the town as well.
This novel, at first, might mislead you. The bakery isn't necessarily the sole focus on the book, but it is, in many ways, the catalyst for the relationships that Polly forms. Those relationships are actually the heart of the story. Also, I'm not sure there are cupcakes being sold like the cover would imply. But if you're a fan, you'll still recognize typical Colgan elements: a woman starting over, owning a bakery, the bakery bringing a community together, and the ongoing battle between picking an ex and somebody new. And a quirky subplot...in this case, it's a pet puffin. I'm not sure that's how puffins would behave, but he sure was funny.
Readers simply follow Polly as she starts work in a bakery, struggles to maintain a terrible apartment, and starts over. In the meantime, she raises her pet puffin, sneaks bread to her friends on the island, and parties with a wealthy friend of Huckle's. But it's the characters she meets, many of whom know each other in this tiny locale, that make the book memorable. There's old Mrs. Manse, the old woman with a sad past who is running a terrible bakery. There are the fishermen, my personal favorites, who Polly makes bread for. There is a potential love interest who makes honey. (My reaction to his name was pretty much the same as Polly's: "HUCKLE???" Especially weird because nobody is called that in the States, where he's from). But I didn't really warm up to Kerensa, Polly's best friend. She's loud, immature, and really darn insensitive at times. I hoped that Polly would outgrow her. It was especially irksome because I felt that Kerensa's happy ending overshadowed Polly's in the final pages.
I do, however, have to give props because I wasn't sure exactly where the love story was going to go. Colgan also wasn't afraid of a little shock value. This book is more tragic than you might expect from a chick-lit novel, and that brings some interesting twists to it. However, Polly spends more time with her friends and at the bakery than she does with her love interest. So the suddenly explosive romance in the end comes somewhat from left field. I also didn't love how they handled the obligatory climactic conflict; a very simple misunderstanding leading to months apart followed by a reconciliation taking no work at all was odd. A reconciliation and ending that take place mainly in the USA, might I add...wouldn't it have been better in Mount Polbearne, the heart of the story?
Okay, while we're on that, I had some nitpicks with the writing as well. (Small spoiler alert:) Colgan starts the book with a few paragraphs of Polly telling her story many years after everything has taken place, so basically the whole book is a flashback. That only left more questions than it answered. She is telling someone called Judith (I never learned who that is) about life there and how you used to have to wait for the tide to come out before you could get to the island; now it's presumed you can use a bridge to get across anytime. But the citizens vote against building a bridge at the end of the story. So is there a bridge now, twenty years in the future? Did the people change their minds? That doesn't make sense. Also, how far in the future is this scene taking place? It seems like Polly is no longer living there as she is telling her story. If that's true, why not? The odd thing was that the story never goes forward to that point in time again, so there's no explanation for any of these things. It really should have been cut.
Meanwhile, I know that Colgan often chooses to switch perspectives, but it bothered me more here because it would happen mid-paragraph and I wouldn't be sure who was thinking. Lots of capital letters are used to express shouting. And how many times do I need Polly's hair referred to as "strawberry blonde?"
This book, like Colgan's others about starting over, starts off a bit slow, like The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris. Give it 50 pages. If I had to complain, I would have liked a little more focus because it seemed like that kept changing. Was I reading about love, the lives of fishermen, adopting a pet, or Polly's relationship with an old woman? Maybe all of them. It seems like I complained a bit, but I also enjoy escaping into someone else's life for a while and seeing what their life is like. If that's your thing, pick this one up. It's a fun read, though not necessarily the best by this author.
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