The Lemon Tree Cafe | Cathy Bramley | Book Review
The Lemon Tree cafe was a piece of Italy in England. It was run by an old lady who was headstrong and Independent. The café looked like an old lady’s kitchen with dark wooden furniture with mismatched chairs and old Italian posters. It was a soothing presence in the middle of the rolling hills of Derbyshire.
Storyline of The Lemon Tree Cafe
Rosanna has a fulfilling and rewarding career in social media until she faces a rather rude request. Her superiors want her to airbrush some features of a model to make her thighs look slimmer and her to look more appealing which she flatly refuses to do. She has a strong sense of right and wrong that will not allow her to go against her principles. She decides to quit her job there and then and comes back to her ‘Nonna’(maternal grandmother)
Nonna let’s her help in the Lemon Tree Café. While she is there, she wants to help her grandmother promote her café and increase it’s reach. She uses the power of social media to do it. Just as they thought things were going well, they are informed that Garden Warehouse is buying a plot nearby and will launch their branch there. This will put all the small businesses in danger.Rosanna cannot stand the encroachment and decides to fight against it. She launches programs to help their sales and spread the word about their business so that Garden Warehouse cannot hurt them when they get launched.
Love Love Love
Amidst all this there is Gabe, a handsome man with gray eyes who has lost his wife a few years ago. He lives on a boat(The Neptune) with his son and enjoys his easy life. Gabe’s entry into Rosanna’s life stirs her heart and brings about all the past memories that she wanted to repress. Can Rosanna give love a chance again? In doing so, will she have to face her own past?
Similarly, a man has Nonna’s attention and she spends time with him. Will she be able to have a new beginning? Will she be able to get herself to speak about a dark past that she has kept hidden for all these years? More importantly will she be able to rely on anyone else either personally or professionally?
Positive points about the Lemon Tree Cafe
The world building and the personality of the characters is impressive. There was Rosanna’s sister who was a new mother. She enjoyed cooking and volunteered to help at the café as soon as she could get some time away from ‘Arlo.’ Rosie’s mother who is herself a workaholic and is always involved in some work or the other. There is Noah, Gabe’s naughty little baby boy who adores Rosie. These characters bring in different taste to the story.
Each character was unique and full of surprises. The unity of the small businesses was touching. You can see just how small-town folk are there for each other.
The mention of food and the aroma of coffee is like comfort in a book.
Negative Points
Let me tell you pretty honestly, this story just went on and on needlessly. It seemed like there was too much chaos going on simultaneously in everyone’s lives. Some side plots just existed for the sake of it and did not actually add any value to the story. It took me very long to read it because the author was just not getting to the point. It made me lose interest a lot of times but then again, I still came back to it because at the end of the day, the story was sweet and heartwarming.
A door had closed on an unhappy part of my life and the rest of my life was an open door. Sometimes the harder you try to solve a puzzle, the more elusive the answer bec
