Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe. by Jenny Colgan Review

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(More customer reviews)To Issy Randall baking was in her genes; it was in her blood. Growing up in Grandpa Joe's Bakery helped. Issy would sit beside Grandpa Joe as he baked his bread and iced each bun with the utmost dedication. "Bread is the Staff of Life!" he'd often say to Issy. Fast forward twenty odd years or so when Issy is thirty-one; she now lives with her roommate Helena, a nurse in London. She often visits Grandpa Joe in the Nursing home and he promised to write down all his recipes for Issy.Issy loved to bake cupcakes; she would turn up at work with a Tupperware box full of cupcakes much to her colleagues delight. In a word, Issy Randall can create stunning, mouth-watering cupcakes that are lighter than air...she doesn't even measure her ingredients but waltzes around the kitchen, throwing ingredients into her bowl and whizzing it with her electric mixer.
After being made redundant from her office job at Stoke Newington Municipal office and dismissed by her boss and lover, Graeme, Issy became depressed. Encouraged by her roommate Helena, Issy decided to open up her very own Cupcake Cafe. " How hard could it be?" she thought to herself. Opening her own Cupcake Cafe would show that no good lover of hers a thing or two about her determination and skills. She found a nice little shop on Pear Tree Court that was on sale which she made an investment on with her redundancy money from her admin job, and turned it into the business of her dreams. Nothing could be easier than opening your own cafe, right? What's there to do but bung some cake in the oven, feed a few customers and reap the profits? Wrong. Issy didn't count on the gazillion forms and applications she had to fill and then there were the builders to contend with the bank managers, the auditors and the cantankerous old snobbish ladies from the cooperative who confronted Issy about her baking junk and stealing their customers; but Issy Randall was determined and she met each obstacle head on!
The Cupcake Cafe opened for business and thanks to Pearl, a recently unemployed single mother whom Issy met at the Resettlement courses meeting held on Oxford Street, London, Issy and Pearl turned the Cafe into a warm and cosy little place to sit, enjoy a sweet morsel , a good cup of coffee and chat away whilst watching the world go by. But Issy didn't know what was behind the corner threatening to shut up Shoppe.
I fell in love with the book from the start and couldn't put it down. I, too, identified with Issy, being a home baker myself. I envisioned the role of Issy being portrayed by Anne Hathaway should it ever become a movie. The author throws in many delightful recipes throughout the book and delights her audience with tiny morsels of information of baking.
The characters are very true to life and the reader can identify with them. I fell in love with Grandpa Joe and cried my eyes out when he passed away! Another character that is strange but endearing is the Ironmonger who strangely creeps behind the shadows under certain scenes. He is a dark but very real and human character which the author slowly reveals to the audience towards the end.
Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe is the type of book a person can read many times in their lives and never get bored with it. It is a light and pleasant read. Like a decadent chocolate cupcake, this Novel will tickle anyone's taste buds. The author does have the habit of overextending her fondness of the word 'had' throughout the book which I found annoying; other than this, I should say, this is a tastefully good read. I praise the author for a great piece of fiction.


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