Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop

This book is just such an enticing proposition, a beautiful retro cover and promises of a lovely story as sisters Anna & Imogen take over the Brighton Ice Cream shop left to them by their grandmother.

Anna is the solid, stable sister in a relationship with divorced dad Jon. Imogen is the free spirit who is travelling around Thailand and journeys home to help take over the business. It has the setting for a great tale.

I found that what offered so much promise at times fell a little flat. Too much story, not enough book to do it in. We meet the family matriarch Vivien at the start of the book an her legacy is left behind but it's not fully explored, she's a bit player and it would have been nice to have blended her story a bit more with that of her granddaughters. In fact that seems to be the ongoing fault with this book.

Story lines are introduced then almost thrown aside as we move into the next. Anna's journey to Florence learning to make gelato should have been a book on it's own. The backstory of their father's breakdown, Anna & Imogen's stories all jumble around vying for attention and none really get it. It feels rushed and a little empty, it didn't pull enough emotion out for me.

The result was the characters remained one dimensional and a little fickle. The shop never quite the story, yet it was sold as the story. I just felt like I'd ordered Italian Gelato and ended up with cheap supermarket vanilla. It wanted to be up there with Colgan's Rosie Hopkins yet it let itself down.

It's a pleasant summer read but it won't remain with me as a favourite.