Book review : The Pumpkin Spice Café - Laurie Gilmore

In short, the book recounts the story of Jeanie and Logan. Jeanie is a woman from Boston who, after a catastrophe at the place she had worked for the past ten years, has moved to Dream Harbor to take over her Aunt Dot's café. The Pumpkin Spice café. That is where she meets Logan, the handsome farmer who is in charge of delivering produce to the café once a week. Together they will work to develop a relationship while trying to navigate the ups and downs of small city life, working through gossip, jealousy and their own fears.

From the first pages, I found myself transported into the story, Jeanie being so relatable to a fellow woman really helped to make this book a real page turner. Jeanie is a woman who is passionate, leaving basically no room for people to place a word in during conversations, making them endless monologues. She also has a tendency to overthink a lot of situations, however, at other times, she should've overthought and overreacted, but she decides that she won't do anything about the situation. From this angle, this character really makes the reader see what happens when you overthink. Having an internal battle with yourself, gaslighting yourself into thinking that maybe it was all in your head, that noise you heard outside was just a racoon and not at all a crazed ax murderer who chose you as his first victim. But what if it was?

Logan on the other hand seems like the calm and collected type. The man who is logical and solves problems. The untouchable, the unmovable. However, it is highlighted pretty early on in the story that Mr. handsome farmer is not really how he seems, he has a pretty heartbreaking track record with the ladies and doesn't seem to realise that he's setting himself up for failure by trying to avoid getting involved with a woman again. At some point, he does a little introspection and, by understanding more about himself, realises that being impulsive and reactive doesn't do him any good in this relationship because he tends to see patterns and compare Jeanie with his ex girlfriend a lot, ultimately sabotaging his success.

While all of this is happening, we are introduced to other townsfolks, friends of Logan and other people from his immediate entourage, colleagues of Jeanie at the café and her brother who we hear about a little. All of them having their set of problems and relationships... And also opinions about Jeanie and Logan's relationship, or should I say lack thereof as people had already started warning Jeanie not to hurt Logan and teasing them about their obvious attraction long before they ever got together, giving Jeanie a smut book about a milkmaid and a farmer as a way of telling her ''we know''.

Overall I would rate this book an 8/10 simply because the writing style was very engaging and the characters endearing and you could see yourself in them. But I am taking two points off for realism and speed, maybe you will say that I am a pessimist, but I feel like it was too easy. Just a little bit generic, the same old story of boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl likes boy, relationship ensues. Then we have problem one, overcomed, problem two, overcomed. Then they live happily ever after. It just seems like it doesn't happen like that in real life... And it's the same for the speed at which the story unfolds, there is almost no challenge, it seems like all of this happens in the span of a few weeks and we are supposed to believe they are soulmates or something? These are the only two points that make it a little bit less realistic to me.