The Sunshine and Biscotti Club by Jenny Oliver

The ovens are pre-heating, the Prosecco is chilling…and The Sunshine and Biscotti Club is nearly ready to open its doors. But the guests have other things on their minds… 

Libby: The Blogger Life is Instagram-perfect for food blogger Libby…until she catches her husband cheating just weeks before her Italian cooking club’s grand opening. 

Eve: The Mum Eve’s marriage isn’t working, but she’s not dared admit it until now. A trip to Italy to help Libby open The Sunshine and Biscotti Club might be the perfect escape… 

Jessica: In Love with her Best Friend Jessica has thrown herself into her work to shut out the memory of the man who never loved her back. The same man who’s just turned up in Tuscany…

Welcome to Tuscany’s newest baking school – where your biscotti is served with a side of love, laughter and ice-cold limoncello!

The cover of The Sunshine and Biscotti Club will definitely entice you in if you are looking for a vibrant Summery read and the story it hold inside is a light, easy read perfect to pick up and put down on a lazy down around the pool.

Ultimately the storyline is about a group of friends who are reunited this Summer to help Libby renovate her baking school slash hotel ready to open to visitors from all over the world but along the way we find out each of them have their own relationship problems that they need to work through.

The recipes that Libby and her friends recreate in this book are mouth-wateringly good  and I found myself wanting to bake biscotti and I am a stranger to the kitchen. This is one of those books that I feel could have benefitted from having a couple of the recipes included in the book for readers to recreate.

Relationship troubles is a big focus in this book and with each chapter alternating between Libby, Eve and Jessica we get to know each of the characters and their problems and I was hoping they would all get their happy ending but I was just so surprised that the girls didn’t come together with a sympathetic ear and wise words for each other.

The only thing missing for me was the lack of chemistry between the characters considering they are all friends that go way back and who lived together for me the connection between them all was missing.

This storyline was set in a blissful location and I enjoyed the renovation side to the storyline, Libby sure got her friends to work hard. With a gentle pace and an easy storyline this book will make great company for your holiday this year.

Paperback               Kindle

The Vintage Summer Wedding by Jenny Oliver

A Vera Wang dress, the reception at a sophisticated London venue, and a guest list that reads like a society gossip column are all the ingredients of Anna Whitehall’s perfect wedding that never was…

Spending the summer uncovering hidden treasures in a vintage shop, Anna can still vividly remember both her childhood dreams; the first was that she’d become a Prima Ballerina, and dance on stage resplendent in a jewel-encrusted tutu. The second was that at her wedding she would walk down the aisle wearing a collective-gasp-from-the-congregation dress. 

Years ago Anna pirouetted out of her cosy hometown village in a whirl of ambition…but when both of those fairy-tale dreams came crashing down around her ballet shoes, she and fiancée Seb find themselves back in Nettleton, their wedding and careers postponed indefinitely…

 Don’t they say that you can never go home again? Sometimes they don’t get it right… 

This one summer is showing Anna that your dreams have to grow up with you. And sometimes what you think you wanted is just the opposite of what makes you happy…

I loved the soft, cute cover of The Vintage Summer Wedding and after reading the synopsis it sounded like a light, fun and charming read and having enjoyed one of the author’s previous books before I wanted to give this one a try.

Anna and fiancé Seb have had to return to their childhood village after losing her job and losing a lot of money that she has spent on their wedding which has now been cancelled things are not looking good and she cannot share Seb’s enthusiasm at returning back to where they started.

I really struggled with the beginning of this book and I put that down our main character Anna, she really isn’t a likeable character in fact she was just a spoilt madam and although she has lost her job and had to cancel her wedding I had no sympathy for her at all and I struggled to see what the lovely Seb saw in her.

The second half of this book was when this book come into its own, the supporting characters were great and eventually Anna began to mellow thanks to them. I was surprised at the storyline because I was expecting it to be more wedding related but I did enjoy Anna’s involvement with the dance act and also her work in the little antiques shop especially when she was organising the hoard to find the beautiful garden which was hidden away behind.

This was an enjoyable read once it got going I just wished the main character would have been more likeable. I will still look forward to picking up another book by this author as she has a great style of writing that flows so effortlessly.

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off by Jenny Oliver

Welcome to the most celebrated patisserie competition in Paris – ready, steady, bake! 

Watching snowflakes settle on the Eiffel Tower, Rachel Smithson’s cosy English village feels very far way – as, thankfully, does her commitment-phobic ex, probably already kissing someone else under the mistletoe. But Rachel hasn’t come to Paris to mope she’s come to bake. Hard. Because the search for Paris’s next patisserie apprentice is about to begin! And super-chef judge Henri Salernes is an infamously tough cookie. But Rachel isn’t about to let her confidence (or pastry) crumble. 

She’s got one week, mounds of melt-in-the-mouth macaroons and towers of perfect profiteroles to prove that she really is a star baker. As well as clouds of flour, and wafts of chocolate and cinnamon, there’s definitely a touch of Christmas magic in the air…

Rachel hasn’t come to Paris looking for a fairy-tale romance, but the city of love might gift-wrap her one anyway…

I was really excited to start The Parisian Christmas Bake Off, I love Christmas themed books and I also love books that feature baking but I was also a little worried as I have never watched The Great British Bake off so I wasn’t sure if this was going to be a problem but lucky for me it didn’t effect reading this book at all in fact if you have never watched a cooking program in your life it doesn’t matter you will still enjoy this one.

Rachel is feeling down and thanks to everyone back home they have sent her away for Christmas to Paris to compete to become top chef Henri Salernes’s patisserie apprentice. The heat is on in the competition but Rachel soon begins to put everything she has into her baking and showcases the most tasty treats to try and win not only the completion but to also get her happiness and confidence back again so she can start living again.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book it had a sprinkling of festivity, a touch of romance and a glorious amount of mouth-watering baking! I don’t think I have ever felt so hungry reading a fiction book before. The descriptive writing sets a gorgeous setting of Paris that makes you feel as though you are being transported there with the characters. The authors descriptive writing didn't stop here, when the contestants were in the kitchens competing the tastes, smells, and how things visually looked all seemed to pop out from the book I was like a kid in a sweet shop! I loved Rachel although a couple of times in the book she did really frustrate me but she quickly redeemed herself.  One part of the book that I had predicted completely threw me when it came clear that I was wrong and I do love this in a book, something unexpected. After reading this I will look forward to future releases by Jenny Oliver.

Kindle