Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery

I was captivated by The Little Beach Street Bakery when it was released last year. Following on from the successful method of releasing mini series of books like Rosie Hopkins Sweet Shop and the Cupcake Cafe, Jenny Colgan has decided this year to revisit Polly in Mount Polbearn and the quaint little bakery we all fell in love with last year.

Often when books form part of a series people week say it's okay if you've not read the first one, in this case I'd say it's probably better if you had add it tends to delve straight in where we left Polly at the end of book one and its tears straight on with all the characters so you might feel a little out of the loop if you haven't read book one.

If you have read book one then you'll feel right at home as Polly, her boyfriend Huckle and her puffin Neil live out their idyllic life on a tiny Cornish island as Polly runs the local bakery. Trouble is on the horizon though as the owner of the bakery passes away and Polly finds it under new ownership who have very different views on what makes a good bakery.

It's got the same charm as the first book and I loved the first half of the book but I have to admit to finding the latter half less engaging. It was very reminiscent of book one, almost too much so and some of the story felt a little bit samey. I hate saying that about a Jenny Colgan book but in this case I felt there was something missing to drive the story onward.

It seemed to almost have too much going on and many of the story threads I wanted to explore seemed to stop short so we could follow ones we already had in the first book. I wanted to spend more time on Nan the Van and Polly's business venture and less on other aspects.

It's a nice easy going read and leaves a warm fuzzy feeling as Colgan's books often do and if you liked book one I'm sure you'll find lots to enjoy it's purely that I felt her other series' have been better as sets than this one had turned out.