Review: The Cafe by the Sea by Jenny Colgan #TLCBookTours #TheCafeByTheSea

by Susan Roberts

The Cafe by the Sea is another delightful book by Jenny Colgan.  If you enjoy light-hearted stories with easy to like characters, give her books a read.
Amazon affiliate links are used in this post. A free book was provided for an honest review.

June 2017; William Morrow; 978-0062662972
ebook, audio, print (416 pages); women's fiction

The Cafe by the Sea is a good book to read as your first book by this author. It has family issues, acceptance problems, love and a wonderful story of learning to be who you are meant to be and not who others want you to be. Along with that, there are beautiful descriptions of the islands in Scotland and to top it all off - RECIPES for the food that is written about in the book - Bannocks and Steak and Ale Pie are two that I would try if I cooked.

Flora fled to London after her mother died, leaving bitter words to her family and her community in the small island of Mure in northern Scotland. When she is sent back on an assignment for her law firm to try to help a rich US tech mogul fight a local plan to build wind turbines that would ruin his view, she has to face the negative feelings from hr family and the small town. Along with missing London and her life there, she had a huge crush on her boss at the law firm. While on Mure, Flora has to make a lot of decisions about what to do with her life. As she gets caught up in daily life at the farm and in the town, she has to decide whether she was met to live a small life in the big city or learn to live where she was meant to be.

I have read a lot of books by Jenny Colgan but this was one of my favorites. Even though it appears to be a light read, the author grapples with several difficult themes throughout the book. The characters were well written and very real. Plus I am ready to book a trip to Scotland to see the beautiful islands that she writes about so lovingly. This is a definite must read.

Buy The Cafe by the Sea at Amazon

About the Book

Years ago, Flora fled the quiet Scottish island where she grew up -- and she hasn't looked back. What would she have done on Mure? It's a place where everyone has known her all her life, where no one will let her forget the past. In bright, bustling London, she can be anonymous, ambitious... and hopelessly in love with her boss.

But when fate brings Flora back to the island, she's suddenly swept once more into life with her brothers -- all strapping, loud, and seemingly incapable of basic housework -- and her father. Yet even amid the chaos of their reunion, Flora discovers a passion for cooking -- and find herself restoring dusty little pink-fronted shop on the harbour: a café by the sea.

But with the seasons changing, Flora must come to terms with past mistakes -- and work out exactly where her future lies.

Also available from HarperCollins | Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Jenny Colgan was born in Scotland and has lived in London, the Netherlands, the U.S. and France. She eventually settled on the wettest of all of these places, and currently lives just North of Edinburgh with her husband Andrew, her dog Nevil Shute, and her three children: Wallace, who is 11 and likes pretending to be 19 and not knowing what this embarrassing ‘family’ thing is that keeps following him about; Michael-Francis, who is 9 and likes making new friends on aeroplanes, and Delphine who is 7 and is mostly raccoon as far as we can tell so far.
Things Jenny likes include: cakes, far too much Doctor Who, wearing Converse trainers every day so her feet are now just gigantic big flat pans; baths only slightly cooler than the surface of the sun and very very long books, the longer the better.

Author Links: Website, Facebook, and Twitter

Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina when she isn't traveling.  She and her husband enjoy traveling, gardening and spending time with their family and friends.  She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with her on Facebook.

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