Stevie‘s review of The Cupcake Diaries: Spoonful of Christmas (The Cupcake Diaries Book 4) by Darlene Panzera
Contemporary Romance published by Avon Impulse 26 Nov 13
Based on the title, I picked this one up expecting to read a US equivalent of the UK’s Jenny Colgan (whose Meet Me at the Cupcake Café has only recently been published over the pond): the blurb makes comparisons to Debbie Macomber, but while I recognise the name, I don’t think I’ve read anything of hers. As promised by the title, the book is about the life and loves of three young women who have gone into business together selling cupcakes, but there the similarity to Colgan, in my opinion, ended.
The fourth in a series, this short book feels rather over-stuffed with characters – not just the three main couples from previous books but also a large collection of family, friends, and friends-of-friends, many of whom I assume will be familiar to readers who have been following the series, but some of whom seem to be newly introduced. The book opens with the three heroines (and this book would really have benefitted from concentrating on just one couple) preparing for Christmas, and a Christmas wedding, as well as debating whether or not to sell their successful cupcake business to a millionaire who wants to make a present of it to his daughter. All have reasons for wanting to hang onto the shop, but equally all are facing upheavals in their love lives – and so the vast sums of money on offer would come in very useful.
And that’s just one subplot in this novella! As well as three romance subplots, there’s also the mystery of who has been sabotaging the shop’s Christmas decorations, and the story of a young boy in foster care who has little to look forward to over the festive season (I find his story possibly the least believable of the lot – in spite of, as well as because of, various high-profile mishandled cases recently, I doubt his foster parents would have been approved by the UK authorities and assume the US system works in a similar way). The subplots are interwoven to greater or lesser extents, as the heroines and heroes get involved in the collection of presents for underprivileged children – which are then stolen by the saboteur, who also disrupts the Christmas wedding – and the boy who sparked their interest in the foster-care system crops up again and again in the lives of all of them.
Although I kept reading in order to find out who this saboteur would turn out to be, I’m rather disturbed that the characters seem to have no insurance against break-ins and so are potentially facing ruin due to the sabotage – not to mention all those donated presents that had to be replaced. They really need a business advisor – something Colgan seems quite good at slipping into her tales of young women setting up in business. I’m also disturbed by the attitude of all three heroines towards food and body-image; although they make and sell cupcakes, it seems that they very rarely eat their products, and when they do, the experience is the ritualised division of a single cupcake between them. Plus, at least one of them fears pregnancy due to not wanting to get fat. I’d expect that sort of attitude to be flagged up as an issue for the heroine to overcome in a UK book of similar genre, rather than something regarded as normal by all three main female characters.
Somehow this book manages not to score a total fail for me, but I doubt I’ll be picking up anything else by the author unless I can be reassured by other readers that the issues that made me cross in this one won’t be appearing again.
Grade: D
Summary:
For fans of Debbie Macomber comes Spoonful of Christmas, the fourth installment in the popular Cupcake Diaries series.
Andi, Rachel, and Kim each have their own reasons for wanting this Christmas at Creative Cupcakes to be special.
Andi is scared that Jake’s job offer with another newspaper will move them to a different state.
Rachel, set to marry Mike on Christmas Eve, is afraid her cousin Stacey will ruin the wedding.
Kim fears she’ll never get a ring and Nathaniel will leave her after the holidays are over.
What they didn’t count on was having a modern-day Grinch try to steal Christmas away from them. Can they unmask the culprit before it’s too late … or will this be a Christmas to remember for all the wrong reasons?
Read an excerpt.
Other books in this series:
