I’ve seen the Laurie Gilmore books in libraries and bookshops for a while now. The covers definitely suggest my kind of light reading. I have, however, resisted them.

Sort of. I’ve had The Pumpkin Spice Cafe on my Kindle for over a year, through Prime Reading. It’s taken borrowing it from the actual library for me to finally read it.

Let’s just say I shall be returning both copies.

It’s a fairly standard small-town story about a city girl finding that what she really wants in life is to live in a small town and run said town’s most popular cafe (and, also, be with the town’s resident hunky loner). Apparently these places only have the one cafe (my local small town seems inundated with them, and there’s another trying to open up in a spare unit).

Anyway, Jeanie has been left the Pumpkin Spice Cafe by her aunt, who wants to retire. Jeanie had been PA to some money-man (or lawyer, or CEO, or something; I forget which) whom she found dead of a heart-attack at his desk. Aunt’s offer comes at the right time, and Jeanie up-sticks from Boston to Dream Harbour. They always have such cutesy names, too. Can’t think of any in real life.

The first person she meets is flannel-shirt-wearing local farmer-hunk. Not Luke. But I can’t remember his name. (To be honest, I only remembered Jeanie’s because I looked this up on my Kindle account to work out how long I’ve attempted to read it.)

It’s an entirely forgettable sort of novel, and even for a Cosy Romance it was quite dull.

Apparently, after looking it up, it was written to a brief created by the publisher’s algorithm. I don’t know how true this is, but I can believe it. I found it rather lacking in – I think humanity is the best word for it. Soul. It was all far too formulaic. And I read a lot of books written to formulae. Also explains quite why so many Dream Harbour novels have been published in only a few years.

This was just…well, I’m not bothering with the rest of Dream Harbour’s probably equally tedious romances. Has anyone read the rest? Do they get better? Are Jeanie and not-Luke just, well, boring? Please let me know!

This post includes Amazon affiliate links. This simply means when you click on the links I might earn a commission, but there is no additional cost to you. Other bookshops and editions are, of course, available.