Review: The Pumpkin Spice Cafe

Summary

When Jeanie’s aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job.

Logan is a local farmer who avoids Dream Harbor’s gossip at all costs. But Jeanie’s arrival disrupts Logan’s routine and he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl, except that he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Will Jeanie’s happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won’t fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes…

Tropes

grumpy x sunshine, small town, slow burn, found family, cozy

My Rating

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, Spice: 🌶🌶🌶

My Review / Thoughts

“Reading was probably safer than hiking, anyway.” -How To Fail at Flirting

TLDR: very cutesy, well done slowburn, relaxing, could have fleshed out subplot, mentioned ex too many times

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This was a very relaxing read. If you’re laying in bed, having finished your skincare, and you want to read a book that will make you feel good, this is the one. The overall plot of Jeanie coming to Dream Harbor to find herself and along the way also finding Logan is very sweet. There is really no point in the story where I felt overly stressed for the character, even with the “stalker” subplot. 

Another thing I appreciated about the book was that when events were mentioned throughout the book, the story jumped quickly to those events with not much fluff in between, also not including much about side characters besides their backgrounds. I liked this because although this book was still a slowburn, it delivered those “cutesy” moments to you efficiently. I really liked the way the slow burn was delivered in this book.

The story went by very quickly with the author’s seemingly main goal being to deliver an easy small town romance. I wished parts of the book were more fleshed out, like the intruder subplot. The conclusion to that background storyline was very lackluster, but I can see from the author’s POV that that storyline was not really meant to mean anything besides bring Jeanie and Logan closer together. This makes sense for a feel good romance, but might have added an interesting mysterious element to the book.

This book is also in 3rd person which is not usually my favorite, but honestly was not a deal breaker for this book.

This book would have been a 4.5 or even a 5 for me if it hadn’t been for the fact that Logan has trust issues and throughout the book he and other characters kept bringing up his ex in name over and over again. I feel like giving a one time backstory with some mentions would have sufficed, but I just felt it was a lot. Although, I can see how this lends itself to the idea that Logan was very traumatized and how he trusts Jeanie. 

– TheReyaView