Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop - Abby Clements - Guest Book Review

Published by Quercus

Guest book review by Tracy Terry

About the novel:

When Imogen and Anna unexpectedly inherit their grandmother Vivien's ice cream parlour, it turns both their lives upside down. The Brighton shop is a seafront institution, but though it's big on retro charm it's critically low on customers. If the sisters don't turn things around quickly, their grandmother's legacy will disappear forever.

With summer fast approaching, Imogen and Anna devise a plan. Rather than sell up, they will train up, and make the parlour the newest destination on the South Coast foodie map.

While Imogen watches the shop and conjures new marketing ideas, her sister flies to Italy to attend a gourmet ice cream-making course. But can their best-laid plans survive their warring family, tempestuous love lives - and the great British Weather? One thing is for certain - this summer will be like no other . . .

Tracy's thoughts:

What a wonderful cover, perfect for the book. What you can't see looking at the image is how the blue is actually embossed with the prettiest blue foil effect. 

Light and fluffy and ultimately just about as sweet as ice cream itself, whoever coined the phrase 'holiday read' may well have had this in mind.

And yet, with memories of a certain retro ice cream parlour I've visited since I was a child in mind, as much as I really wanted to like this book it somehow didn't quite hit the mark.

OK, so its Chick-lit and everyone knows that part of the appeal of Chick-lit is that the reader is guaranteed their happy-ever-after ending. Nothing wrong with that per se but in this instance there were just so many incidents which got the happy-ever ending treatment that there was no mystery whatsoever as to how the plots, for there were several threads to the story, might play out.

Still, on the plus side, there were some rather scrumptious sounding ice cream recipes at the end of the book which should keep fans of the foodie novel happy.

Many thanks to Tracy for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library! Tracy blogs at Pen and Paper - do pay a visit there and read her fab book blog!

Kismetology - Jaimie Admans

‘Mac here knows her stuff when it comes to kismetology.’

This enjoyable contemporary novel deals with matters of the heart in an entertaining and humourous way. Mackenzie Atkinson moved three doors down the road from her mother Eleanor’s house to live with her partner Dan. As she might perhaps have suspected, this has resulted in her mother being a regular visitor to her home, made a problem by the fact that her mother doesn't hesitate to interfere in all aspects of Mackenzie's life, in particular her love life, and often comments, usually unfavourably, about Dan, even if he is in the same room! Mackenzie decides that what would help an awful lot is if her mother were less lonely and had her own romantic interest, and she sets out to help her find a perfect match.

The twist comes in that, rather than send her mother out into the world on blind dates with complete strangers, Mackenzie decides that she will do the advertising and sourcing of potential suitors and that she will even meet any prospective partners before her mother does and vet them first, only lining up dates with her mother if the men are up to scratch. Cue many episodes of Mackenzie meeting often very unsuitable and sometimes downright awful candidates! Finding a balanced, mature gentleman proves much more difficult than first anticipated. The story kept me engaged as I wondered who, if anyone, Mackenzie's mother would like, and whether Mackenzie's own love life would survive the whole experience intact too.

I really enjoyed this romantic, funny novel, and the storytelling and the editing impressed me. Mackenzie has a likeable personality and is an engaging lead character who carries the story throughout. Her reactions to the various different men she meets on the dates are brilliant. As well as trying to help her mother, Mackenzie begins to consider her own situation and wonders if she could improve it, in particular in terms of work but also love. Eleanor is an interesting character, usually accompanied by pampered pooch Baby. Despite the antagonism between mother and daughter at times, it comes across that Mackenzie genuinely cares about her mother and wants to see her happy. The only small thing I would mention is that sometimes the thing that Mackenzie had made her mind up to do was repeated several times in her thoughts; I think this was just to reiterate her determination to do what she had planned, but occasionally I thought the idea had been described and didn't need repeating again, or arguing about with Dan again. 

I thought this was a light, entertaining and funny read and many will sympathise with Mackenzie's situation. I looked forward to reading a bit more every time I picked up my ereader and the story always kept me interested and often made me smile. Jaimie Admans writes really well and with heart about love, relationships and families and has crafted a promising debut novel. Also I think the book cover is really pretty and attractive. 

Thanks very much to the author for kindly sending an ebook copy of this novel for me to read and give an honest review. 

You can find the author on twitter @be_the_spark and visit her website here.