Chocolate…the most irresistible temptation?
The Gingerbread Café is all a buzz! This Easter, Lily and the rest of the town of Ashford, Connecticut are planning a truly decadent Chocolate Festival. Cooking up a storm, CeeCee and Lily are not just baking a batch of their sinfully delicious chocolate-dipped gingerbread men, but an excess of chocolate truffles, squidgy, cinnamony hot cross buns and melt in your mouth chocolate eggs. The Gingerbread Café staff have definitely enjoyed the tasting process!
Add in Damon’s cute-as-a-button seven year old daughter, Charlie, up for a visit and Lily’s perfect Easter may just be around the corner. Until her ex-husband Joel turns up demanding twenty thousand dollars… Suddenly the future of the Gingerbread Café is not so clear…and Lily finds herself eating far more of The Gingerbread Café’s treats than her skinny jeans allow…
Can Lily concoct a brilliant plan to save her beloved café, convince Damon she has no feelings for Joel and still throw a Chocolate Festival the town will be talking about for years? There’s only one way to find out...
Welcome back to the warmth, cupcakes and hot chocolate of The Gingerbread Café – your home away from home
The Review:
This is Book 2 in The Gingerbread Cafe Series. If you haven't already, you should read Book 1, Christmas at the Gingerbread Cafe, first. You can find my review here.
And now for Book 2:
As Lil and Damon are just beginning to enjoy their new love, Lil’s ex-husband Joel turns up to create havoc. He wants $20,000 or he’s going to make life hell, all the while, Lil is trying to organize the Chocolate Festival.
Chocolate Dreams at the Gingerbread Café, the second installment of the Gingerbread Café series, is as cute as pie. We venture back into the town of Ashford, visiting old friends once more and experiencing the joy that is vicariously eating all the delicious food prepared at the Gingerbread Café.
Okay, okay, that last bit is a lie. You can’t vicariously eat Lil, CeeCee and Damon’s food. You are going to WANT TO, but vicarious eating just isn't the same as the real thing. Luckily, I learned this lesson reading the first installment, Christmas at the Gingerbread Café, and went into the second book fully prepared. A trip to the bakery, and I was ready.
Seriously, do not read these books without food at hand. I probably wouldn’t recommend reading these books on a diet either, but if you’re anything like me (and forget to eat because reading), then these books are gold. Stock up your plate with all the bakery goodness you can find and get reading.
The romance storyline in this installment follows Lil and Damon's new relationship, and we get to enjoy their fresh new love and sexy-sweet adoration of each other. A big part of this development is Lil getting to know Damon's daughter, Charlie, as they work out their own bond, and these were my favorite parts. Charlie is adorbs.
There’s no romance conflict, instead the primary conflict storyline takes the form of dick-face Joel’s arrival, as Lil must work out how to come up with the money to get rid of him, without losing the Gingerbread Café.
There's also a secondary conflict, which is a sad one, and I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say I was glad I had cake available so I could eat my feelings while having a little cry at certain parts of this novella.
So it’s not all rainbows and sunshine, but like the other books I’ve read of Rebecca Raisin, it’s impossible to read Chocolate Dreams at the Gingerbread Café without having a goofy smile plastered across your face at least most of the time.
I can't wait to read the third book in this series, Christmas Wedding at the Gingerbread Cafe, which comes out this Wednesday! Woohoo! You can pre-order it here.
Chocolate Dreams at the Gingerbread Cafe by Rebecca Raisin is a contemporary romance, released by Carina UK on March 20, 2014.
Find this book at: Amazon | Amazon AUS | Goodreads | The Publisher
More from Rebecca Raisin on Love Reading Romance:
Christmas at the Gingerbread Café (Book 1 in The Gingerbread Cafe Series) by Rebecca Raisin - Book Review
The Bookshop on the Corner by Rebecca Raisin - Book Review
Writing The Bookshop on the Corner by Rebecca Raisin - Guest Post
