The Cafe by the Sea audiobook

I always love a book by Jenny Colgan. She always knows how to make me smile and I always loose track of time reading her books. So when I found out she had a new book coming out. I immediately preordered it and it feels like I've been waiting for it for AGES!!So in this book we meet Flora who is born and breed in Muir. A beautiful, rustic, Scottish Isle. However she has moved to London to live out her dream to be a lawyer. Although at the moment she is a paralegal as she hasn't taken her final exams to become a lawyer yet. She works for a company who doesn't really know she exists and is head over heals in love with her boss. Who again doesn't know of her existence. But Flora knows she will one day be able to charm this bad boy and he will fall head over heals in love with her too. One day a American man comes into their office wanting their help to oppose a wind farm that is going to be set up across the water from Muir where he has gone to restor a old monument and turn it into a posh hotel. He has been trying to oppose the windfarm but is having no luck. Knowing they have Flora in their office who comes from Muir. He demands she helps him get the people of Muir to stand behind him and oppose the wind farm too. The only problem is. The people in Muir dislike Flora, and Flora hadn't been home since her mother passed away. Finding herself back in Muir is the last thing she wants. But to keep her job. She will have to swallow her pride and return home. Their she finds out that they hate the new American guy in the town as he hasn't even tried to integrate himself and he doesn't buy from local suppliers but instead gets everything shipped in from miles away so why should they help him. When he doesn't want to help them. To have any chance in turning the people around Flora must turn things around, own up to her past, reconnect with her family and the people of the town and find out who she is. Will Flora also find love along the way? I have to say this is a good book. I wasn't overly keen on who Flora gets with in the end. I mean I saw it coming but I would have preferred it to be someone else. You'll understand what I mean when you read the book. I just thought he wasn't the right match for her and I never really warmed to him. He seemed to change his spots right at the end of the book and something just felt a bit off about their relationship. That said I knew they would get together. Jenny has left herself open to another book in Muir which is wonderful as id love to go back and visit the town and people again soon. I would love to catch up with Flora, her family and her best friend and see how the town are doing now. When A book mixes together two of my loves. Cooking and reading. It is always a winner for me. So I'll forgive the person and the bit of the plot that I found predictable and still give it four stars. I hope you all enjoy your trip to Muir. Happy reading everyone

This was a lovely book about family, expectations, relationships and yummy baked goods:-) Just whatI was looking for after finishing a particularly grim mystery!Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com

Lovely, lovely book. I love Jenny Colgan books and I have never read one I didn’t love. This one is the first in a four book series which I also enjoy immensely. It’s set in Scotland and has all the usual ingredients that her books give, funny lines, warm feelings and a happy ending.I felt very warm and fuzzy once I’d finished it. I shall be hunting down the next one as soon as I can. Highly recommend this one.

Flora swore she would never go back home to Mure, the little Scottish island where she grew up. Instead, she settled in London, working and enjoys the life there. Well, enjoy is a bit far-fetched, but she has a great friend, Kai, at work and a crush on her boss, Joel. However, he is definitely out of her league. Then, she has to go back, thanks to a millionaire with big plans for the island. So, now she has to face her past, her father, and the brothers she left behind. And, who knows, going back home may turn her life around.4.5 stars READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION!

This book. What an absolutely lovely, lovely book. The heroine - her brothers, her father, her best friend, Agot! :) :) The entire family/town makes this book. And yes there is a romance, and a HEA (although def a little more fictiony)It made me smile sooooo much. I laughed out loud at times. I want to eat fresh-made cheese and butter, and steak pies. Damn it.I will fondly regard this book and I can't wait to reread it.

Originally reviewed here @ AngievilleI was not expecting this. I was simply not expecting just what was to come when I picked up this deceptively pleasant-looking novel. My mom gifted me a copy of Jenny Colgan's The Café by the Sea awhile ago, but it took until the other night while I was browsing my shelves after starting and stopping no fewer than four different books for me to snatch it up off my TBR shelf and give it a go. And I'm not remotely ashamed to say that I didn't even make it past the epigraph before falling hopelessly and irretrievably in love. The epigraph read:hiraeth (n): a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home that maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places in your pastTears filled my eyes. I cannot tell you how frequently I experience that emotion as an adult, how complicated and full (and yes, very often painful) it has been trying to accommodate it, and just how very much it meant to me, knowing that there is a word out there that means exactly what I feel, that holds in it the precise shape and weight of my longing.Flora MacKenzie fled to London as soon as she possibly could. Leaving the northern Scottish isles and her home island of Mure, her brothers, her parents, and their farm, she went in search of the life she (and her mother) felt certain should be hers. And life as a paralegal at the top law firm in London does have its perks. A couple of truly good work friends, not bad pay, access to everything that kind of bustling, never-sleeping city can provide. And, of course, it has Joel Binder. Never mind that he is her boss, technically American, and can never remember her name unless his secretary provides it. Joel has just kind of been it for Flora ever since she walked into the office on her first day at the job. And yes, she realizes it's hopeless and ill-advised and simply never going to amount to anything. But, try as she may, she just can't seem to shake the crush. And then one day she is summoned to Joel's office. It seems an extremely high profile American client requires Flora's expertise as a native of Mure. He plans to set up a luxury resort on the island and wants her to ease the way, so to speak, with the locals. Which is how she finds herself sent back home against her will and her better judgement. And everything is exactly as it was (and as she feared). Her mother is still dead. Her father and brothers are still failing to deal with it. The townsfolk are still judging her for up and leaving in the first place. And the whole thing seems utterly impossible, to say nothing of the fact that Joel will be flying up shortly to check on her work and she has absolutely nothing to show for it.As they stood together gazing out to sea, Lorna leaned over toward her."It's going to be okay," she said quietly, because she was the very best type of friend to have.The friendships between the people on this island are very quiet and very real. Flora and her childhood best friend Lorna are quite different from each other, and Lorna (who stayed on the island and teaches at the local primary school) spends much of the novel trying to open Flora's eyes to how she really feels about their home. But they are always there for the other and very much in each other's pockets when it comes to Flora's hapless brothers' antics and Lorna's hopelessly unrequited love for the local doctor. As for the setting, there's very little to say beyond the fact that the moment I landed on Mure with Flora, I was a goner. There is magic embedded in the shores of Mure. The way Ms. Colgan describes this fey land is filled with a love that is bone-deep and a spirit that is wild and endless. My question wasn't whether Flora would stay. It was how in the world everyone that should stay would ever be able to. Fortunately, the pop-up café that Flora finds herself setting up (with the help of her mother's old recipe book) goes a long way toward bringing the island inhabitants (and transplants) together and healing many of the old wounds that have plagued them.It is not a hardship loving these characters. Particularly Flora. And particularly Joel.Joel was taken aback, suddenly, by the startling nature of seeing them there. It was the oddest thing. He'd never known anything quite like this; he had never thought about families, not in this way. But if he had . . . It was so strange. The laughing girl with the pale hair; the tiny child who looked like a miniature witch, who even now was running up to him, that strange white hair cascading out behind her, shouting, "YOEL!" with a huge grin on her face; the music; the turning, laughing women; the soft scent in the air; the warmth of the lights.It was like walking into something he was already nostalgic for, without it ever being his, without it even having passed him by. It was a very strange feeling. From when he was very young, Joel had learned that if ever he wanted something, he should just take it, because so few people seemed to care what he did or how he did it. But this; this didn't belong to him. He couldn't even see how it ever could. You couldn't buy what they had.Joel. My chest feels rather tight whenever I think about Joel and his solitary soulness, his crushing drive, and the helpless and inevitable way he falls under the thrall of both Flora and her home. This land where the sun rarely sets in the summer, where the people lean always into the wind, where some women are just acknowledged to be selkies and that's the way of it. It isn't a wonder this pair of Americans wanted to stay. I did, too. The Café by the Sea is summer reading of the finest kind.

Wat was dit een heerlijke chicklit!Ik dacht dat ik was uitgekeken op dit genre. Vandaar dat dit leesexemplaar een beetje bleef liggen, en toen verscheen het boek en oeps haha. Nouja ik had zin in iets lichts en luchtigs, dus ik gaf het een kans. Wat bleek: ik ben niet uitgekeken op het genre, ik ben uitgekeken op schrijfsters als Mansell en Kinsella. Nou zijn zij erg toonaangevend en is het dus logisch dat hun voorbeeld veel wordt gevolgd, maar er is natuurlijk veel meer dan hun boeken en boeken die er op lijken.Jenny Colgan was de frisse wind die voor mij even nodig was in het chicklitgenre. Grappig, leuke humor, maar toch ook een serieus onderwerp. Dit boek draait niet om die ene afgrijselijke en/of onbereikbare man! Het gaat over Flora en haar thuisgevoel (of gebrek daaraan) bij haar familie op hun eiland. Dat vind ik een verfrissende focus voor een chicklit, en maakt dat het verhaal meer body heeft. Natuurlijk komt het mannelijk geslacht met alle voor- en nadelen wel aan bod, maar het is niet het hoofdonderwerp van het boek. Dat vond ik leuk.Al met al erg genoten van dit boek dus, en ik hoop zeker dat er meer van haar vertaald gaat worden! Haar boek over een boekwinkel heb ik al in de kast staan voor mijn boekhandelboekenverzameling, erg blij dat haar stijl bij me in de smaak viel :)

4.5 stars. Review to follow

Colorless, mousy Flora Mackenzie from the island of Mure in Scotland has failed to make much of an impression at the prestigious law firm in London where she works as a paralegal. She spends her days hoping her boss will notice her and fall in love with her and her nights lonely and alone. When her boss suddenly asks her to do a big job for an important client, Flora is elated, until she realizes this job will take her back to Mure, a place she fled three years ago after her mother's death. Back on Mure, Flora is an outcast. Her father is silent, her brothers crude, rude and mean as always. They work hard on the farm to be sure, but would it kill them to cook and clean a little? A mishap in the kitchen forces Flora to rediscover her mother's recipes and confront her conflicted past. She also meets a handsome nature guide, Charlie, from another island and he seems to fancy her. Will she at last break her dry spell of dating? Then her boss shows up to deal with the American billionaire client and they need Flora's help. Can she come to terms with her past and get the locals to forgive her for leaving? Joel, Flora's boss, is a hot shot lawyer who has lived all over the world. He can't stand the godforsaken wilderness that is Mure. He never notices his paralegal in London but on Mure she is like a different creature. It's almost like the island weaves a spell around everyone and everything. He must be careful not to notice too much or he'll lose his armor he has carefully built up. This book is so full of feels! Jenny Colgan has a way of building a story up to a heartwarming and tearjerking climax. She still needs to work on her endings. This one is a bit abrupt and the story could use a sequel. The character development here is top notch. None of the characters are appealing at first but as the point-of-view shifts, the reader becomes more involved in that character's life story and starts to feel a fondness for them. I did not like the love triangle and was surprised by how it played out. Even so, I liked this heaps more than her mobile bookshop story. The local color here is amazing! Mure is a place where the sun never sets in summer, the old tongue is sometimes spoken, myths and legends are fully believed and cream and butter come from actual cows on a local farm. The sea, the sky, the beach, the farms- Mure sounds like another world. I could easily picture it. At first I didn't like Flora. I didn't like how mousy she was and how lame her London life was. This story sounded similar to Sophie Kinsella's My Not So Perfect Life with Flora being a whiny, bored wannabe Londoner with the heart of a farm girl, but I think the character development here is better and more realistic. Flora has to confront past demons and come to terms with her grief over her mother's death. She also has to interact with several big, noisy brothers and a taciturn father, all of whom are grieving in their own way. I teared up a bit when Flora found her mother's recipe book. I loved the concept of finding it and how much it meant to Flora's Mum and how the recipes are being passed down. The food didn't really appeal to me all that much but having my own similar recipe book from my grandmother, I was very interested in Flora's cooking experiments and how that helped her on her journey. I came to know Flora as a sweet, caring, feeling young woman trying to find her place in the world independent of her family.Joel comes across as a nasty, cold smart hot shot lawyer and womanizer. He dates young, stick thin blonds who never eat. He spends one night with them- no more - leaving a trail of broken hearts or whining women anyway, in his wake. His backstory doesn't come out until late in the book and it explains some of the reason why he is the way he is. I felt his character development was a bit unrealistic. His relationship with Mure is too predictable but abrupt. Charlie is complicated. I agree with Flora's final assessment of him. I really really liked how he helps inner city kids enjoy nature and how he provides them with a strong male role model. I loved how he was from another island and was still a foreigner! I loved how he prefers his Gaelic name. Flora's family is messy and complicated like real families. Her brothers have their own individual identities. Iness is a bit of a hard hearted jerk at times. His daughter Agot is a very immature, bratty 3 year old. My nieces never acted like that at 3 and they know Peppa is a GIRL pig LOL! We don't really know what happened with Iness and his ex-wife but she isn't a very good mother. I liked Hamish, the slow witted one. He's a gentle giant, I think. The one thing he wanted was a surprise and so funny. Fintan was a bit of a surprise. At first I thought he was a jerk to his family but there is a reason behind his moods. Finally, there's Colton Rogers. I expected someone totally different. He provides the comic relief. I couldn't help but like him.Fans of Jenny Colgan's other books will not be disappointed in this one. Fans of Kristan Higgins and Sophie Kinsella will like this one too.Content: Some language, dialogue, innuendo and off page love scenes.

Quizá tenga algo que ver que hace 2 años estuve en Escocia, en la isla de Skye, en Portree y me he situado totalmente en esas casitas de colores. Una historia maravillosa , de familia, del sitio de cada uno pertenece ....Tiene un toque de romance que quizá me ha sabido a poco, pero no hace perder a la historiaHe visto que hay más libros de esta serie, no se si serán de los mismos protagonistas o de secundarios, pero solo puedo desear que los publiquen en castellano

Hermoso libro, me encantó!! Un libro que con mucho humor y amor, amor romántico, mucho amor de familia y sobre todo amor a la tierra, a las raíces y todo lo que ello implica en la vida de alguien que decide huir de ese lugar.Un libro muy fácil de leer, con unos personajes que me encantaron, que no son perfectos, pero que tienen personalidad, que saben lo que quieren a pesar de todo, y además como escenario de todo esto tenemos a Escocia, las tierra altas, las islas, es decir, para mi irresistible, con sus costumbres, sus leyendas, sus misterios, cómo no enamorarse de Escocia!!!Primera vez que leo a la autora y me gustó mucho su estilo, el ritmo del libro, y la pluma que yo definiría como suave, divertida y totalmente actual. Si no la leyeron nunca, definitivamente la recomiendo y si lo hicieron invito a que le den una oportunidad a esta hermosa historia.

The Café by the Sea is a sweet, fluffy treat of a book -- not especially deep or filling, but enjoyable the whole way through. I enjoyed the setting -- a beautiful, isolated Scottish island where everyone knows everyone else, and where, sadly, the younger generation doesn't see much of a future. When Flora arrives back on the island for a work assignment, she instigates changes that will ultimately lead to the rejuvenation of the island, by convincing a billionaire about to open an exclusive resort to hire and source locally.The work assignment is also the means for Flora to finally get noticed by her boss, an icy playboy lawyer with a tragic past who never allows emotions to seep to the surface. Honestly, the love story didn't click for me. Flora, a paralegal in a prestigious law firm, has had a hopeless crush on Joel for years, and although it's not giving away too much to say that the island has a profound effect on him as well, I couldn't figure out what Flora saw in him in the first place, other than his amazing good looks. Meanwhile, there's a potential love interest on the island, but that part of the story doesn't get a whole lot of attention, so it's pretty clear early on which way things are going.I loved the parts of the story about Flora reconnecting with her father and brothers, coming to terms with a loss in the family several years earlier, and reconnecting with the people and natural beauty of Mure. However, I was a little unsure about some of Flora's decision-making regarding her career and her future. When we meet her, she's working as a paralegal with an eye toward becoming a fully qualified lawyer, but her actual work in law seems to fall by the wayside as she becomes more and more involved in using her family's history to open up and run an amazing café in the center of town. Was she never really all that interested in becoming a lawyer? It seems that she's just fallen into this new life, and I would have liked to have her at least think about what it might mean to walk away from her professional plans and change course like this.Still, this is really a charming book, with a gorgeous setting, interesting, quirky characters and a plot that hits some emotional notes without ever losing its sense of romance and light. When you're looking for something to lift your spirits, check out The Café by the Sea!

This was ADORABLE. Just a great, happy, enjoyable read. I loved the setting (is Mure a real island?) and the characters AND THE FOOD. Ohmygoodness all the food listed in here made me so hungry I actually cooked dinner last night. I am super excited to start book 2 because I feel like I need to see more of this place.Overall though, I just really love Flora and I how she got a chance to really explore what "home" meant to her. It something that I have personally given a lot of thought too so I was happy to see it happen in a book.

Flora left her Northern Scottish town of Mure after her mother died. She went to London where she became a regular city girl. She returns to Mure for work after a few years. Coming home to the remote Scottish isles, Flora finds that she is needed and that this is what she needs. I loved this Jenny Colgan novel probably more than all her past novels. This author has a talent for creating likable characters, interesting story lines and bringing out the lovely setting of rural Scotland. In the end, I wish Flora had chosen the other man but this was an absolute delight of a story.