The Apple Pie Ice Cream Parlor: a Dream Harbor Novella / Laurie Gilmore
What is it: special edition novella
Did I like it: nope
This book was published to promote the Week of the English Book. Lucky me I got out of the reading funk and into a book-buying spree just in time to receive this little book along with the stack of books I purchased.
As happy as I was with my other finds, I ended up reading this one first because of course. The Dream Harbor series is very popular, and I’ve seen the books everywhere. I hadn’t read one yet but that was no problem for this book; there is a handy map at the front of the book, (which I’m guessing is in all the books of the series), which greatly helped set the scene. A lot of characters pop up in this story that I figure have their own stories in the series. On the plus side, this helps build the world of an everybody-knows-everybody small town, which the limited space of a novella really needs. On the minus side, there’s barely enough space in a novella to create a believable storyline, especially when it’s about two people falling in love. To constantly have additional characters pop up, felt a bit cluttered at times. Even the main characters got annoyed at one point because they kept getting interrupted during conversations.
Those main characters are Leo and Charlotte, both teachers, and best friends of three years. The story kicks off with them mid-kiss, something they are both shocked about.
As they are both scheduled to volunteer at an event to raise money for the local fire station, it makes things uncomfortable to say the least, especially when they both end up scooping ice at the titular ice cream parlor. The kiss makes Charlie see Leo in a completely different light, and she can now only notice how handsome he is, how defined his muscles, and how delightful his voice, and is no longer able to have a normal friendly conversation with him. So far, I was able to keep up with the story and thought: at least it’s not as bat-shit crazy as last year’s book!
But then the story turned on me. Charlie doesn’t know how to deal with her turned-upside-down emotions and instead of taking a step back and thinking things over, she proposes that they sleep together in a non-romantic way so they can get the feelings out of their system. There’s a backstory of her pink hair and piercings leading guys into thinking she’s kinky in the bedroom. It felt crammed into the story just to give it a bit more weight and backstory to the Charlie character but because the story is so short, it came out of nowhere and was solved way too easy. Leo’s backstory involves two affairs with two former colleagues so clearly teachers are his type.
Their one night of non-passionate passion is followed by four days of pining and agony at work, and then they inevitably bump into each other outside of work because it’s a small town, have a chat and declare their love.
The second half of the story definitely ruined it for me and I’m just glad this meant I got to cross out another item of my reading challenge real fast. Onto the next one!
Bookworm in the City 