Snowed in at the Comfort Food Café by Debbie JohnsonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Meredith (never Merry) Bailey is the proprietor of Bailey & Bailey, a Private Equity House in London. Divorced and estranged from her one remaining child Molly, Meredith is totally dedicated to her job. Until as part of her periodic proof of life messages Molly sends Meredith a postcard picturing the Comfort Food Café in Dorset. Intrigued, and desperate to cling onto anything at all concerning Molly, Meredith drives down to Dorset with the express intention of buying the café. Of course anyone who has read any of the previous seven books in this cosy series will know that Cherie Moon would as soon sell the café as cut off a limb, something that Meredith fails to understand at first. However, canny Cherie hints that she might think about a sale ... if Meredith agrees to work in the café for ten days. Meredith is all set to refuse until Cherie drops the bombshell that Molly actually stayed in the small apartment above the café, an apartment that Meredith could also use.
Soon the beguiling inhabitants of the village (including a very handsome vet and a rescue dog) are weaving their charms over Meredith. But there is a lot of pain in her past that she needs to unpick before she can really accept what the café has to offer.
I'll be honest, I've been in a bit of a book funk recently. Nothing is hitting the right note, I've DNF'd several books by authors I usually love and been a bit meh about others - I don't even want to tell you how many ARCs I've got a third of the way through and then just left. So, what I'm saying is its probably not the book its just me being a miserable beyatch. But this just didn't grab me. Maybe because I know P/E Houses and the people that run them, maybe because I cannot fathom why someone from that world would even contemplate buying a small café in Dorset, maybe its just got to that point in the series where every previous couple has a cameo and (frankly) I can't tell one from the other.
Anyhoo, its a cosy romance set in a small Dorset village with quirky inhabitants and a vibrant social life.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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