Caroline Roberts (1)

Squints real hard.

So this is not going to be pretty.

Look away, look away.

This book was awful. Let's ignore the typos galore, the freaking continuity errors, the lack of dialogue that was happening. This was barely a Christmas book. At this time of the year, I freaking crave Christmas romance books. I can't help it. It gets me in the holiday mood. I love to decorate, put on some carols, drink some alcoholic eggnog and just relax. Reading this book at 11 p.m. and finishing it up around 3 a.m. show more just made me angry. Angry because this could have been a nice slam dunk and a great second book. Instead I wonder if this was even edited by someone based on the typos I saw and highlighted on my Kindle. That was the only thing keeping me awake at that point.

"The Cosy Christmas Teashop" takes place three years after the events in book #1. Ellie and Joe are happily married and running the castle and teashop respectively.

Now that Ellie and Joe are settled, they are dealing with having the castle open up to host weddings as well as there regular tours/teashop hours. Ellie and Joe are also now trying to have a baby now that they are bit older.

Unlike with the first book, there is no back and forth between Ellie and Joe. The main character is Ellie. And at times though she is only 31, she sounds like a woman twice her age. We barely get any dialogue in this one, and when we do, Ellie sounds like a stereotypical character from a British soap. She calls another woman her same age "pet" one time. She sounds matronly and old though is near times most of the story.

And I hope you like reading about Joe's penis. Cause it's referenced a lot. There are no hot sex scenes like we had in book #1, we just read a lot about how much Joe/Ellie like to have sex or really Joe likes to have sex. Wait, there may have been a sex scene, but I have blocked it out. Yes, I think I remember one. The other one was just terrible with the author talking about how they danced on each other's bodies and I don't know. What the hell does that even mean?

Ellie barely speaks to anyone and vice versa. It drove me up the wall in the end. I don't even get why she and Joe are even together since they seem to have zero things in common. I love romance series cause you get to see the same couples over and over again and you get why they are together. In this one I was perplexed since they seemed like two strangers who enjoyed having sex with each other.

There is no development with any other characters either. I think it's weird that Ellie's best friend from back home is referenced, but never talked to. We do get a scene with Ellie talking to her dead grandmother though. So there's that.

There are continuity errors galore in this which drove me up the wall. Ellie's brother was only 17 in book 1, it's been three years since they got married or five years since the first book, which would make him 21 or 22 depending. Roberts has him at 26. I wanted to scream about that. Especially since in book #1 it is mentioned that Ellie is 9 years older than her brother.

There are also typos all over. I hope you like reading "Jo-oe" "o-kay" and "Mr and Mrs" with no periods anywhere. There was also I think a couple of times extra "s" in certain words and I refuse to go look that mess up. The funniest/saddest one was Ellie saying Lord H when referencing Lord Henry that is never used again. I assume they forgot to spell out the rest of his name.

The book is also repetitive to the point that I think that it could have easily lost 20-30 pages if things had been cut out. We get that things are okay between Joe's mother and Lord Henry even though there was initial awkwardness. I get that Ellie is going to make some lemon drizzle cake. I know that the rooms that Ellie and Joe live in need to be overhauled. Repeating it more than once was not necessary.

If Roberts wanted to make more an impression there should have been more of a Christmas element to the book. At the end of the book we get some of that (it snows), but other than that, there is no description of the decorations or people in any great detail. You would think that most of the book is just the same 8 or 9 characters mentioned over and over again. And honestly, I was expecting some recipes to appear in this one. It would have made the book better if we had some of Ellie's grandmother's recipes.

Task 9- Tasks for Winter Solstice and Yaldā Night: Read a book in one night - in the S. Hemisphere, read a book in a day. –OR–Grab one of your thickest books off the shelf. Ask a question and then turn to page 40 and read the 9th line of text on that page. Post your results. –OR–Eat a watermelon or pomegranate for good luck and health in the coming year, but post a pic first!

Bonus task: Read a book in one night. show less

As soon as I realised this was set in Northumberland I couldn't wait to read it and quickly bumped it up to the top of my reading pile. It is absolutely jam-packed with Northern-isms from our unrivalled hospitality to the famous cup of tea before bed (us Northerners don't pay any attention to caffeine). Cosy is the right word for this book, it is so warm and lovely, wrapping the reader in a huge hug that they never want to be released from.

Ellie is a great character, taking a risk and show more following her dream with the help of Nanna Beryl's old Be-Ro recipe book - I think every house had one in the 70's, and we've still got ours. I could almost smell the scones cooking and I drooled over the wonderful sounding choffee cake, emitting a squeal of delight when I spotted the recipe in the back of the book.

Not content with just drooling over the cakes, we have hunky Joe to keep our pulses racing. He's dark and moody at first but you just know he's got a heart of gold underneath those pecs of steel. As their courtship began, I crossed my fingers and hoped that Ellie could scale his battlements and become Queen of his castle.

Lots of laughs and lots of fun, The Cosy Teashop in the Castle is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and melt even the coldest heart. The famous Northern hospitality is described so perfectly and warmly; it is pure escapism into the wilds of Northumberland and I can't think of a better place to escape to.

I received this e-book from the publisher, Harper Impulse, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. show less

What a delightful setting with a cocky mobile bartender and a standoffish mobile fire oven pizza vendor. The food is abundant and the drinks are superb.

Lucy is a bit gun shy after being dumped by her cheating fiancé so when the handsome and arrogant traveling Cocktail Guy starts hitting on her, she shoots him down. But who knew he would be so persistent.

Jack didn't understand his attraction to the ice queen Pizza Girl. She didn't seem that interested. Perhaps it was the challenge to make show more her smile.

I have to admit I'm not a fan of either Lucy or Jack. Lucy is just plain rude especially when her dog pretty much destroyed Jack's sign and she laughed about it, and Jack disappointed me with his hopeful pursuit of Lucy and then pretty much ghosted her afterward. Yes, they have a lot of responsibility with their businesses. Yes, they have issues in their past, but they need to step up and be adults. Jack's carefree style and love of the outdoors is commendable, but he still lives with a roommate and apparently is a commitment-phobe due to a loss in his past. His treatment of Lucy after stringing her along is unacceptable. Lucy has her own cottage and is barely getting by with her new venture, but her jumping to conclusions is childish and she didn't seem appreciative enough of Jack for finding her gigs. They do finally find their balance and live happily ever after, but I just thought more groveling was needed and more recognition was required.

What I loved about the book was the idea of a cocktail campervan and a fire oven pizza horse trailer. The wonderful parties and partygoers they meet are stories in themselves. I was also thrilled to find recipes in the back of the book for Jack's creative cocktails and Jack and Lucy's yummy desserts.

If you enjoy angsty romances with intriguing and unique settings, give this book a try.

Thank you to Ms. Roberts for giving me the opportunity to read this book with no expectation of a positive review. show less

This book was good company for a very hot summers night where sleep was proving illusive, but I didn’t feel it really lived up to the reviews I’d read about it. It’s basically a narrative of Claire’s summer holiday following a very personal life trauma. It gently winds its way through her mental recovery from a physical trauma, with a bit of romance dropped in for good measure. Caroline Roberts deals sensitively with a subject that many of us have directly or indirectly experienced show more and it’s lovely to see such a topic talked about so personally. It’s very readable - an easy beach read, but I found myself predicting the outcome almost from the start. It’s predictable and somewhat contrived, it would have been easy to skip out three quarters of the book and still understand what’s happening... in an Eastenders kind of way. That being said, you’d miss the point I think the author is trying to portray: Slow down, notice the moment, feel the emotions, understand your reactions, look for the way ahead; in that way she achieved her purpose. I’d love to live in the beautiful (perhaps not quite so quirky) cottage with beautiful views of the sea and people being people. The book left me with a warm feeling... although perhaps that wasn’t so welcome on such a scorcher of a night show less