Cupcakes for Christmas by Kate Hewitt

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Title: Cupcakes for Christmas
Author: Kate Hewitt
Series: Return to Willoughby Close #1
Published by: Tule Publishing
Release Date: October 25th 2018
Format: eARC
Pages: 208
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Holiday, Women's Fiction
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 12 Books of Christmas Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Winter 2018
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Always the baker, never the bride…

Olivia James has always been happy running a tea shop and bakery in the Cotswold village of Wychwood-on-Lea, and helping her friends find their happily-ever-afters, topped by the perfect wedding cake. But as Christmas approaches, Olivia is home alone and questioning her choices while eating too many of her own specialty confections.

When Simon Blacklock, a handsome, whimsical stranger, breezes into her shop and buys a cupcake and then returns the next day and the day after, Olivia begins to dream. Can romance blossom amidst the sugar and flour? And after a lifetime of living on the side lines, is she brave enough to star in her own story?

Simon may be hiding a painful secret, but Olivia harbors secrets of her own. If they can dare to risk their hearts, this Christmas might be the most magical yet!

My Review:

I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

3 stars — Well, I ended up disappointed.  This one just didn’t follow any formula I know, and I ended up feeling like I was slogging through the reading.  Part of that is that the writing style isn’t a good match for me…it felt a bit verbose, and that’s not to my personal taste.  Which is not to say it was badly written, I just have a low tolerance for that.  It was also a very slow romance, and since we only had Olivia’s POV, it was very confusing and frustrating as well.  Honestly, at times it felt more like women’s fiction than romance.

This book tackled some interesting topics, but they left me feeling kind of down at the end of it.  It tackles a few mental health issues, including Olivia’s mother getting older, and it did so in a very realistic way.  Which isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes I want my fiction to have a bigger, clearer reward, and that was missing for me.  The same for the other mental health topic tackled, which I can’t go into without spoilers.

Olivia was a character I liked, but never really connected with.  I’m not entirely sure I can pinpoint why, but I just never really empathized with her the way I should have.  Which is not to say I didn’t feel for her struggles with loneliness and the changes in her life, but only to a degree I guess.

As for Simon…well, I wanted to love him, but I just didn’t know a lot about him since we never got his POV, and he really wasn’t in the story enough.  He was adorably awkward and dorky, and I was drawn to that.  But he was also cryptic and unreliable, and so it made it hard to connect.

And as such it made it hard to invest in their romance as well.  I wanted to, but I just didn’t.  There were some great sweet moments, but it just wasn’t enough.  Perhaps if we’d gotten some answers earlier on and saw Olivia and Simon working through that, it would have worked for me more.

So yeah.  A lot to say that it was okay, but only okay.