The Travelling Tea Shop by Belinda Jones

Laurie loves a challenge. Especially if it involves tea-time and travel. So when British baking treasure Pamela Lambert-Leigh needs a guide on a research trip for her new cookbook, she jumps at the chance.

The brief: Laurie and Pamela Ð along with Pamela's sassy mother and stroppy daughter Ð will board a vintage London bus for a deliciously unusual tour of the USA's East Coast, cruising from New York to Vermont. 

Their mission: To trade recipes for home-grown classics like Victoria Sponge and Battenburg for American favourites like Red Velvet Cake and Whoopie Pie. All the women have their secrets and heartaches to heal. As well cupcakes galore, there's also the chance for romance... But will making Whoopie lead to love?

Every year I await the release of the new Belinda Jones book and after enjoying Winter Wonderland so much (easily my favourite book by this author) I couldn’t wait for her new release The Travelling Tea Shop not only because it does feature characters from Winter Wonderland but also because it is a book (I love books!) about cakes ( I love cakes!) and travel ( I love to travel!) and romance ( yes you guessed it !) So all in all, this book just sounded like pure perfection to me!

Laurie is about to take on a new project at work and this could be her biggest challenge to date. Well known and loved baker Pamela Lambert-Leigh is working on a new cookbook but there is a tight schedule and lots to research so she hires Laurie to plan a tour of the USA’s East coast with stops on the way to trade classic American cake recipes with classic English recipes.

All sounds pretty exciting, now throw in a big double decker red bus, Pamela’s crazy mother who is the bus driver and a stroppy daughter, could this be a road trip from hell or a deliciously good tour?

This was so hard to read considering I am dieting for my Wedding! There are cakes galore in this book and they all sounded mouth-wateringly good, I even found myself wanting to bake especially how easy the “pound” cake sounded! 

I will be honest and say I didn’t feel like the story slash travel had the right balance in this book which is so unlike this author’s books. I found it was too much travel with only a little storyline verging onto a travel guide rather than a novel it seemed to lack the spark that is in each and every one of Belinda’s previous novels which I hate to say because I am a mahooooosive Belinda fan and just want to love everything about all of her books. The authors descriptive writing style that I always love is still strong in this book it was easy to picture the settings and it was nice to have some back ground history of the various places too, this book has been very well researched and this is clear in the authors writing.

I loved Laurie you could tell how much she loved her job and how excited she was about the tour, I wouldn’t say I related to her as she was uber organised and a very calm character who manages to come up with a quick solution to any problems without getting into a flap! I wanted to throttle Pamela’s daughter Ravenna she was such a spoilt little madam she played her part well. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another book featuring Laurie and Harvey as well as Krista and Jacques and I would definitely be picking it up as I do think they are such wonderful character that they would make a great book if they could all be big roles in a book.

Although this wasn’t a favourite of mine by Belinda I still enjoyed it and will be eagerly awaiting her next read.