Summer at the Comfort Food Café (The Comfort Food Café, Book 1)

Debbie Johnson

Apr 2016 · The Comfort Food Café Book 1 · Sold by HarperCollins UK

About this ebook

‘Full of quirky characters, friendship and humour, you will devour this engaging and heartwarming novel in one sitting’ Sunday Express S Magazine

Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you raid the pantry in the middle of the night...

The Comfort Food Cafe is perched on a windswept clifftop at what feels like the edge of the world, serving up the most delicious cream teas; beautifully baked breads, and carefully crafted cupcakes. For tourists and locals alike, the ramshackle cafe overlooking the beach is a beacon of laughter, companionship, and security – a place like no other; a place that offers friendship as a daily special, and where a hearty welcome is always on the menu.

For widowed mum-of-two Laura Walker, the decision to uproot her teenaged children and make the trek from Manchester to Dorset for the summer isn’t one she takes lightly, and it’s certainly not winning her any awards from her kids, Nate and Lizzie. Even her own parents think she’s gone mad.

Her new job at the cafe, and the hilarious people she meets there, give Laura the chance she needs to make new friends; to learn to be herself again, and – just possibly – to learn to love again as well.

For her, the Comfort Food Cafe doesn’t just serve food – it serves a second chance to live her life to the full...

What readers are saying about Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe:

‘My new favourite author’ – Holly Martin, bestselling author of Summer at Rose Island

'A lovely, emotion-filled, giggle-inducing story' – Sunday Times bestselling author Milly Johnson

‘A book of hope and solidarity, friendship and humour and the belief that everything might just turn out okay after all’ – Sophie, Reviewed the Book

‘If this book had arms it would grab you and pull you in to the most amazing book ever... just magical’ – Lisa Talks About

‘An engaging, entertaining and loveable book’ – Rae’s Reads

‘I wish I could actually go there... an original story and it has such a romantic ending’ – With Love for Books

Ratings and reviews

Snapped this one up when I was looking for Christmas Reads - bought the second book in the series and when I realised it was the second thought what the heck and bought this one as well. I am so glad I did! I could have happily snarfed up this book in a day but the family had Board Games in mind so had to stop at a frustrating 90% of the way through and just polished it all off this morning. Laura and her children Nate and Lizzie have been living in a grief-induced fug ever since her husband David dies a couple of years ago after a silly accident. Desperate to start finding herself Laura replies to a strange advert for help at a Dorset Cafe and lands the job. Cue a disastrous journey down from Manchester with a sniping teen, a vaguely incontinent black labrador and a very car sick 12 year old. The sort of journey that the thought of makes the parent within us wince at the mere thought of, let alone the true horror of so many hours cooped up with the kids. An hour in the car with a surly teen was my personal limit. Although the hottest summer on record for several years, not all is sunshine for Laura as she slowly starts to emerge from her grief. Told from her perspective nothing feels contrived about this book, and her emotion flows effortlessly on to the page - congratulations Ms Johnson as I am sure it took many a long day and night to achieve this seeming ease. I soon found myself rooting for Laura because she was so clearly a real person with the same contradictory thoughts and feelings as the rest of us and I was just grateful that I was not lost in widowhood as she is. Whilst this book is very definitely about Laura the secondary characters are fully fleshed and we get the same glimpses of their eccentricities and personal foibles at the same as Laura so they seem to be just as vivid and alive as she is. Doesn't matter who they are and how small a part they play in this book they are living and breathing away from the book and you know that from the sensitive way they are dealt with. Nobody is all good or all bad but the genuine mixture of both that we all are - some with quite poignant back stories too; Edie just made me want to hug her and never let go. I was only going to give this 4 stars but then realised that I was eulogising and fawning over this book so I had to upgrade it to a five. I hate giving a five because nothing is perfect but this gave me so much enjoyment and a genuine feel-good feeling at the end that I had to.

Laura Walker is the widowed mother of two teenagers. After her childhood sweetheart and husband dies after falling off a ladder she falls into a pit of gloom and despair. As she tries to rebuild her life she answers a quirky advert for a summer cook at a Dorset seaside cafe with a TMI letter spewing all her anxiety and family traumas. Cherie is the hipy dippy owner of the Comfort Food Cafe and a holiday village of small cottages, quirkily named after 1970s rock legends. She offers Laura and her children a home for the summer together with a job. If you love the idea of a misfit group of individuals being brought together by an elderly hippy mother earth figure who runs her cafe like a community drop in centre, preparing their favourite dishes for her regular local customers, an annual fancy dress party involving half the village for an octogenarian farmer, elderly labradors and ice-creams galore then this is the novel for you. This is like all your memories of holidays when you were a child rolled into one, sunny days, sparkling water, cake and ice-cream every day. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Absolutely gorgeous! It made me tear up quiet a few times and it made me dream of summer and the sea. And it made me wish that there would be such a homey cafe in my town! Heaps and heaps of positive, nostalgic and bittersweet emotions! Thank you!

About the author

Debbie Johnson is a best-selling author who lives and works in Liverpool, where she divides her time between writing, caring for a small tribe of children and animals, and not doing the housework.
She worked as a journalist for many years, until she decided it would be more fun to make up her own stories than to tell other people’s. After trying her hand at pretty much every genre of writing other than Westerns and spy dramas, she has settled on women’s fiction that seems to make people laugh and make people cry, often at the same time.
Her books include The Birthday That Changed Everything, Pippa’s Cornish Dream, and Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe, all published by HarperCollins. She also ghost-wrote model and presenter Abbey Clancy’s debut novel, Remember My Name.
Follow her on twitter @debbiemjohnson, or at www.facebook.com/debbiejohnsonauthor – but be warned, she mainly talks about dogs.