Blog Tour Review: A Little Sugar, A Lot of Love

I received this book for free for a Blog Tour in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A Little Sugar, A Lot of Love Published by Choc Lit on 15th January 2016
Genres: Chicklit, Humour, Love & Romance
Pages: 233
Format: eARC
Source: for a Blog Tour
Goodreads
Amazon Kindle, Audible

Katie’s relationship has had more than its fair share of problems. After a difficult few years things begin to pick up and Katie finally realises her dream of opening up a bakery. Sweet Occasions specialises in novelty and celebration cakes, plus the most inspiring range of cupcakes anyone could possibly ask for!

Utilising her passion and skill helps to inject happiness back into her life, but it’s short-lived as things begin to fall apart. The reality is that you need to run a business with your heart AND your head. Help is at hand in the shape of her partner, Steve. He has the necessary experience, but does Katie want to tie herself to him financially, as well as personally?

Then one rainy, wintry day a bedraggled customer steps inside the door to order a cake …

Sometimes a turning point centres around one single moment in time: sometimes it takes two Christmases and three birthdays …

A heart-warming story that deals with many of life’s most difficult issues: being a single dad when a relationship falls apart, the impact of life-changing illness, dealing with the loss of a loved one … and the search for a soul mate.

Thank you to JB for letting me take part in this tour. As soon as I read the blurb for this book I wanted to read it.

This book is told from many different perspectives. Each chapter is written from the view of one of the main characters. I really likes this because it let you get into their heads and really see what they thought about certain situations and compare that with the other characters in the scene.

The book follows Adam and Katie as they realise that everything in life happens for a reason and even if you can’t see it at the time.

This story really tugged at the heartstrings and I found myself unable to put it down at times. The cakes also sounded amazing!

I look forward to reading more of Linn’s books in the future.

Extract

Grandma Grace peers at me with interest over the top of her glasses, taking the box from my hands and placing it on the side. She wraps her arms around as much of me as she can reach, being at least a foot shorter, and gives me a fierce hug.

‘Thank you, my dear, but the only present I wanted was to see you standing here in one piece. It’s such a long journey and the weather! That rain is relentless, so many places are flooded. To think of you at the side of the road worried me to death and I will admit to saying a few little prayers as one hour turned into two, then three …’

She raises her eyebrow sternly, but it’s a brief moment before those twinkly blue eyes are full of love and laughter again.

‘My boy is here and that’s all that counts.’

‘Grandma, I haven’t been a boy for many years,’ I retort, softly, as she releases me with a tender pat on my back. She might be in her twilight years but her spirit is strong and her mind as sharp as ever. We all thought she’d fade away when Pop died, but the truth is he’s the one who would have faded if she had gone first.

‘You will always be a boy to me. Now, tell me more about this guardian angel of yours.’

While the tea is brewing and the cake is sliced, I hang around the kitchen as I did when I was growing up. Grandma Grace was always easy to talk to; she seemed to understand even when the words wouldn’t come. Her instincts filled in the gaps at times when even I couldn’t make sense of what was going on inside my head. After this failed relationship I began to despair of ever finding someone special.

‘You can’t hurry love,’ she’d told me. ‘It takes time to find your soulmate and in the process you change and grow. That’s why young love often withers, as Pop would have said. Two people either change and grow together, or they grow apart. Love is about sustaining what comes after that first hormonal rush.’

‘But that wasn’t the case for the two of you,’ I remember pointing out.

‘There has to be an exception to every rule,’ she’d replied, with a wicked smile. ‘We were lucky. Fate was kind to us. But with hindsight, we were too young and naive to understand that until much later in life. Don’t fret, Adam, there’s a wonderful young woman out there for you when the time is right.’

Sadly, when I reached that point it too turned out to be yet another huge failure. This time the consequences had been more painful than I could ever have imagined. Kelly was everything I thought I wanted in a woman and, after adjusting to the shock of an unplanned pregnancy, she was a fantastic mother. With hindsight I can see now that parenthood came too early in our relationship, we hardly knew each other. Suddenly I was a family man and yet, surprisingly, the role seemed to come naturally to me. I loved Sunday mornings the best. When a little head would appear on the pillow next to me at some unearthly hour and a warm little hand would wind its way around my neck.

Lily Grace is my sanity, my raison d’être.

 

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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• Goodreads Challenge (2016)

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