The Pumpkin Spice Cafe (Dream Harbor #1)
Laurie Gilmore
One More Chapter (Harper Collins UK)
2023, 357p
Read via my local library
Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: 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…
I have seen this one around a lot lately and all the stuff I was hearing was really positive, about how fun and cute (and spicy) it was. It’s set in a small town that gives a lot of Gilmore Girls vibes. Everyone knows everyone else’s business, the townspeople are warm and welcoming but also quite protective of their own. Jeanie has visited there as a child, her aunt has run the local cafe for years. Then quite unexpectedly she gifts it to Jeanie so that she can retire and travel. Jeanie has had quite an upheaval in her professional life so moving to Dream Harbor and taking over the cafe sounds exactly what she needs.
This was….fine. I think for me, the biggest problem it has, is pacing. Despite the fact that it’s 357p, everything feels like it happens really swiftly. Jeanie hears someone in the alley behind the cafe (she’s actually heard noises multiple times) and this time, she confronts the noise, assuming it’s an intruder but it’s just Logan, local farmer, delivering produce. And after that, everything with Jeanie and Logan goes from 0-100 really quickly. She tells him about the noises and next minute, he’s staying over to do a stakeout with her. They fall for each other immediately – the whole book takes place over just a month and it just felt like things were never really given time to simmer and develop.
Things are ‘complicated’ by the fact that Logan is a massive introvert who once fell for someone who was visiting this small town and then left and went back to her busy life in Boston. Look, Logan also has some childhood trauma revolving around people leaving him, his father disappeared and his mother died when he was five. All very horrible events that would shape a small child’s thought processes. But he was also raised by loving grandparents who are still alive and whom he is still very close to, he has friends he’s made at school and is still friends with. Logan isn’t some weird loner who only ever connected with that one person in his life and then she left. He also made a very weird decision for someone who is shy and a loner, by choosing to do what he did in front of the entire town and now he’s all paranoid that everyone pities him. He carries this baggage into his attraction to/relationship with Jeanie, because she’s not from this town and he just assumes she’ll leave again. Logan’s fear of Jeanie leaving pretty much comprises all of the conflict in this book and instead of having a grown up conversation with her about what her intentions are, he just freaks out multiple times. I actually found Jeanie to be rather tolerant of Logan’s weird behaviour.
There’s a mystery in this of someone attempting to drive Jeanie away, which is ridiculously easy to guess. The thing I was most interested in, was the animosity between Annie, one of Logan’s friends who runs the bakery, and Mac, who runs the local pub. There are future books in this series, but so far, neither of them are about Annie and Mac, the one book I would probably read. I have to admit, I’m not interested in the book that this one set up, between Logan’s other friends, Hazel (who runs the bookstore) and Noah (who runs fishing charters).
All in all, this was just okay. I didn’t mind the town but I honestly felt like the book didn’t do much to really flesh out the character of Logan or build an attraction. Everything just felt very instant to me and that’s not my favourite.
5/10
Book #97 of 2024
All The Books I Can Read 
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