The Sugar and Spice Kitchen by Harper Graham - Small Town Romance Book Review

A gorgeously festive and cutesy romance read, I ate this one up!

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Emily runs the town bakery in Maple Falls; Cole is a firefighter who has returned to the town after several years in New York. The pair were best friends but fell out over an accusation between their beloved grandparents in a baking competition when they were children. When the worst blizzard in years hits the town and Emily’s trapped in her bakery, Cole comes to the rescue. Together they’re in charge of helping the community through the adverse weather, all the while trying to solve the mystery of what really happened in the big bake off.

This is a story of miscommunication (albeit it ancient history ones, at least in terms of the characters’ lives!) and friends to enemies to lovers. The first instance of spice hits early on in the book which is different from what I usually read, but it’s a heated moment that happens out of forced proximity, isolation and anger. It hits hard, then the pair are left with confused feelings about each other.

Read more of my reviews of the Maple Falls series:

This book could function as a kind of advent calendar from mid-December up to the big day, as the romance develops day by day. You can feel the festive spirit increasing alongside Emily and Cole’s relationship towards the big bake off, as well as the small parts of the mystery coming together.

This wasn’t my favourite of the Maple Falls series, as I didn’t get the chemistry 100% between Emily and Cole. I loved the firefighter/lumberjack aspect of it, and the history between the two, but the coming together just wasn’t quite right. There felt like there was a lot more telling than showing, maybe I just needed more of their initial friendship from “before” the big fall out to understand them better in the present.

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Nevertheless, Maple Falls still worked its magic on me! It was just as cosy and seasonally charged as ever. I was hoping there would be a recipe for the Sugar and Spice cookies at the end of the book as I could practically taste them as I read!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an ARC of this book.