Win a Print Copy of
SUMMER AT LITTLE BEACH STREET BAKERY
SUMMER AT LITTLE BEACH STREET BAKERY
Little Beach Street Bakery #2
Jenny Colgan
Releasing March 22nd, 2016
William Morrow
The New York Times-bestselling
author of Little Beach Street Bakery and Christmas at the Cupcake Café returns
with a delightful new novel-with recipes!-that is already an international
bestseller and is perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes, Meg Donohue, and Sophie
Kinsella.
For fans of Jojo Moyes and Elin
Hilderbrand, an irresistible novel—moving and funny, soulful and sweet—about
happiness, heartache, and hope. And recipes.
A thriving bakery. A lighthouse to
call home. A handsome beekeeper. A pet puffin. These are the things that Polly
Waterford can call her own. This is the beautiful life she leads on a tiny
island off the southern coast of England.
But clouds are gathering on the
horizon. A stranger threatens to ruin Polly’s business. Her beloved boyfriend
seems to be leading a secret life. And the arrival of a newcomer—a bereft widow
desperately searching for a fresh start—forces Polly to reconsider the choices
she’s made, even as she tries to help her new friend through grief.
Unpredictable and unforgettable,
this delightful novel will make you laugh, cry, and long for a lighthouse of
your own. Recipes included.
BUY NOW
Chapter 1
“Stop it,”
Polly said in a warning voice. “It’s not funny.”
Neil ignored
her and continued to beat on the little high window with his beak until she
could be persuaded to go over and give him a snack.
He was
outside the lighthouse they had moved into the previous month, all three of
them together, Polly, Neil the puffin, and Huckle, Polly’s American boyfriend,
who has parked his motorbike and sidecar at the bottom of the tower. It was
their only mode of transport.
The
lighthouse hadn’t been lived in for a long time, not since the lamps were
electrified in the late seventies. It has four floors and a circular staircase
that ran around the sides, thus making it, as Huckle had pointed out more than
once, the single draftiest place in human history. They were both getting very
fit running up and down it. One floor held the heavy machinery that had one
turned the workings, which couldn’t be removed. On the top floor, just below
the light itself, was their sitting room, which has views right across the bay
and, on the other side, back toward Mount Polbearne, the tidal island where
they lived and worked, with its caseway to the mainland that covered and
uncovered itself with the tides.
From these
windows you could see the little Beach Street Bakery, the ruined shop that
Polly had revitalized when she has moved to the village just over two years
ago, getting over a failed business and a failed relationship back on the
mainland.
She hadn’t
originally expected to do much in Mount Polbearne except sit and lick her
wounds until she was ready to head back into the fray again, back to working a
corporate lifestyle; hadn’t for a moment thought that in the tumbledown flat
above the shop she would come back to life by practicing her favorite hobby –
baking bread – and that this would turn into a career when she reopened the old
closed-down bakery.
It wasn’t the
most lucrative of careers, and the hours were long, but the setting was so
wonderful, and her work so appreciated, by both the townspeople and the
tourists, that she had found something much satisfying than money: she has
found what she was meant to be doing with her life. Well, most of the time she
thought that. Sometimes she looked around at the very basic kitchen she had
installed (her old flat in Plymouth had sold, and she’d managed to get the
lighthouse at a knockdown price mostly, as Lance the estate agent had pointed out,
because only an absolutely crazy person could possibly want to live in a draft,
inaccessible tower with a punishing light shining out of it) and wondered if
she’d ever manage to fix the window frames, the window frames being number one
on a list of about four thousand things that urgently needed doing.
Huckle had
offered to buy the place with her, but she had resisted. She had worked too
hard to be independent. Once before she had shared everything, been entirely
enmeshed financially with someone. It had not worked out, and she was in no
mood to repeat the experience.
Right now,
she wanted to sit in her eyrie of a sitting room at the very top of the house,
drink tea, eat a cheese twist and simply relax and enjoy the view: the sea,
ever changing; clouds scudding past so close she could touch them; the little
fishing boats bobbing out across the water in faded greens and browns, their
winches and nets heavy behind them, looking tiny and fragile against the vast
expanse of the sea. She just needed five minutes’ peace and quiet before
heading down to the bakery to relieve her colleague Jayden for the lunchtime
shift.
Neil, the
little puffin who had crashed into her life one night in a storm and remained
there ever since, did not agree. He found the activity of flying outside, high
up, and still being able to see her through the window utterly amazing, and
liked to do it again and again, sometimes taking off to fly all the way around
the lighthouse and come back in the other side, sometimes pecking at the glass
because Huckle thought it was funny to feed him tidbits out of the window even
though Polly had told him not to.
Polly put
down her book and moved over to the window, struck as she never ceased to be –
she wondered if she would ever grow tired at it – by the amazing cast of the
sun silvering in and out behind the clouds over the waves, the gentle cawk of
the seagulls and the whistling wind, which could turn thunderous on winter
days. She still couldn’t quite believe she lived here. She opened the old-fashioned,
single-glazed window with its heavy latch.
“Come in
then,” she said, but Neil fluttered excitedly and tried to peck in between her
fingers in case she had a tasty treat for him.
This is the sequel to The Little Beach Street Bakery which was a fabulous read. I adore Polly and Huckle. I recommend reading the Little Beach Street Bakery first, because it sets you up for this one because of a lot of the events in this book really continue on from the first book.
You get a dose of cute too with Neil the puffin who steals the show every scene that he's in.
For a chicklit this book there was a lot of drama, with Polly's bakery and the new owner and with her relationship with Huckle and lastly with Neil. This story had a soap opera feel to it, but not like the soaps we are used to in the US.
Another part of the story deals with Neil, who gets into a scuffle with a new residents cat. I have to say the parts of the story made me tearful, but not to give too much away, Neil is OK.
I was on pins and needles with the bakery situation, because Malcolm was such a scumbag and he really didn't seem to know business at all. The way he treated everyone was just horrific. This actually made me nervous at times because I love Polly so much and I wanted only good things for her.
Huckle is such a great character too. He has great devotion to his family and Polly. Everyone should have a man like Huckle in their life.
If you love British fiction, you'll love this book.
Rating: 5 flowers
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Jenny Colgan is the New York Times-bestselling author of numerous novels,
including Christmas at the Cupcake Café, Little Beach Street Bakery, and Meet
Me at the Cupcake Café, all international bestsellers. Jenny is married with
three children and lives in London and Scotland.
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