Rambling About.. Jenny Oliver's The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Cafe

Title: The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Cafe Author: Jenny Oliver Publication: 27 March 2015 - Carina UK Amazon Description:  Welcome to Jenny Oliver’s brand new Cherry Pie Island series! Home, Sweet Home….? There’s nowhere more deliciously welcoming… When Annie White steps back onto Cherry Pie Island, it’s safe to say her newly inherited Dandelion Café has seen better days! And while her childhood home on the Thames-side island idyll is exactly the same retreat from the urban bustle of London she remembers, Annie’s not convinced that Owner of The Dandelion Cafe is a title she’ll be keeping for long. Not that she can bear the idea of letting her dedicated, if endearingly disorganized staff lose their jobs. Plus café life does also have the added bonus of working a stone’s throw away from millionaire Matt and his disarmingly charming smile! One (shoestring budget) café makeover, a few delightful additions to the somewhat retro menu and a lot of cherry pie tastings later, The Dandelion Café is ready for its grand reopening! But once she’s brought the dilapidated old café back to life, Annie finds herself wishing her stay on the island was just a bit longer. She always intended to go back to the big city…but could island living finally have lured her back home for good?

First Lines: 

The cafe was closed. Behind the white writing on the windows and the little red chequered half-curtains, she could see the faint outline of booth seats and a counter far in the distance. A blackboard had been pulled inside, chalk letters that started big and got smaller as the writer ran out of space advertised milkshakes, best breakfast on the island, coffee for a pound fifty and cherry pie with custard.

Favorites on 4s: 

4%: 'Don't get your hopes up. About the cafe. It's gone a bit, well, wrack and ruin springs to mind.'

14%: It was always the same. Whatever she did, they'd still just remember her for the bad exam results, the late nights, the cigarette packets stashed in the shed, the teenage stuff that everyone did apart from her bloody brother.

34%: 'Retro greasy spoon, but with a hint of glamour, Kind of plastic faded glory.'

54%: Annie scrunched up her face and did a double thumbs-up, which she instantly regretted when she saw the bartender give her another pity-induced brow raise.

74%: They looked better than she thought. Kind of sucked her in in all the right places and shimmered like a fish. Her brother would think them very inappropriate. Which in itself was reason enough to wear them.

94%: 'Oh don't be so English and repressed. Just because you are pregnant, doesn't mean you cannot dance.'

Ramble: I read my first Jenny Oliver book back in December. In fact, it was the book that reignited my love of chick lit and made me eager to discover more UK-based chick lit authors. (I rambled about that book here and here.)

I have a world of thanks to give to Jenny Oliver. Not only for that book and all of the amazing reads that I've discovered since, but for the amazingness that is Cherry Pie Island -- the location for my latest read and several more to come. (Of course, I also have her to thank for cherry pie cravings that my scale may not agree with.)

Annie White was finally becoming well-established and confident with her life and her business -- a far cry from the troublesome and troubled youth she left behind when she left Cherry Pie Island. When her father had passed he willed to her Dandelion Cafe which would continue to be run by a local until she decided not to anymore. After she passed, it all became Annie's. Annie just needed to decide what, if anything, she was going to do with it. 

It was an absolute joy watching her come to grips with the fact that just being on the island would not automatically revert her back to that troubled Annie she fought so hard to leave behind. She had good things to offer to the island and it, in return, had good things to offer to her. 

Of course, you pretty much know from the beginning the direction that the story is going to go in but that doesn't take away from the pleasure of reading it. This is chick lit, after all, not Tolstoy. I have the next three Cherry Pie Island books waiting on my phone and can't wait to revisit!