The Cinnamon Bun Book Store

The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (2024) Laurie Gilmore (Dream Harbor #2)

Hazel Kelly is about to turn 30, and is starting to feel like she’s been wasting her life, doing nothing more than managing a bookstore in the small town where her family lives. She’s certain that the town flirt would never be interested in someone like her.

She looked in the mirror and found the same reflection she’d seen in high school. Well, maybe a little different. A little older. But she felt the same. Same old Hazel.

Noah Barnett fled his family and the pressure they put on him to do things like graduate high school and join the family business. He’s certain someone as smart as Hazel would never be interested in someone like him.

‘I always liked summer.’

‘Oh, yeah? Why?’

‘No school,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I liked being outside. The winter involved a lot of my mom yelling at me to stop jumping on the furniture and my teachers yelling at me for not paying attention.’

The town is lovely, the people are lovely, the book store is lovely.

(T)he colorful braided bracelets he wore on his wrist. Friendship bracelets, the kind girls make at summer camp.

‘My nieces make them for me and send them in the mail.’

‘And you wear them.’

‘They require photographic evidence of me wearing them at all times.’

I just never felt invested in the characters or the story. Perhaps because I initially thought this was a mystery–the cover and title and blurb are of a cozy mystery, so it’s possible I might not have picked this up if I’d bothered to notice it wasn’t a mystery.

Characters: Noah Barnett, Hazel Kelly, Annie, Jeanie, Logan, Jacob, George, Isabel, Frank, Mayor Kelly, Ivy, Cece, Kristen, Rachel

Publisher: One More Chapter

Rating: 6/10

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