Summer At The Ice Cream Café by Jo Thomas

 

Summer at the Ice Cream Café by Jo Thomas.

Published 8th June 2023 by Penguin.

From the cover of the book:

A dream home
Beca Valentino is ready to escape the city. When she sees the perfect house for sale in her hometown, it seems like fate. Is this her chance to build the foster family she dreams of, on the beautiful Pembrokeshire coast?

A big mistake?
Returning home isn't as easy as she thought, however. Her family's beloved ice cream café is gone - turned into a soulless wine bar by her hateful ex-boyfriend. Reconnecting with her oldest friend, fisherman Griff, isn't straightforward either. And when, instead of the children she expected to take in, two wary teenage boys appear on her doorstep, Beca fears she's made a terrible mistake.

A recipe for change
But an old family recipe book is just the inspiration she needs. Soon, with a little help from friends old and new, Beca is selling mouth-watering homemade gelato from a pop-up café on the beach.

Then disaster strikes. Will the Valentino family legacy be lost forever? Or can Beca create a new recipe for happiness?

***********

Beca Valentino left her hometown of Swn Y Mor twenty years ago with a broken heart and, apart from a few brief visits home to see her dwindling family, she has not been back since - but now it is time for a change. After the break up of her marriage, Beca has sold the London cleaning business she built from scratch, and she intends to make Swn Y Mor her home once again. Beca has bought her dream home overlooking the sea (which comes complete with a herd of dairy cows), and she intends to become a foster carer to fill her house, and heart, with the family she could not have of her own.

Reconnecting with her past is more of a trial than Beca anticipated, especially as the family that anchored her to Swn Y Mor are now all gone. She is no longer seen as a local, but neither is she an outsider. She is unsure where she stands with her former best friend Griff after so long away, and to make things worse, her grandparents' beloved ice cream parlour has been taken over by the man who broke her heart and converted into a swish, but soulless, bistro.

When the young foster children she was anticipating turn out to be two unfathomable teenage boys, who she has no idea how to connect with, Beca thinks she has made a terrible mistake coming home to Wales. But then her grandmother's old notebook turns up, full of delicious recipes for gelato, which brings all those golden childhood memories flooding back. Beca begins to see a way to recapture something of her past, and make a new future, with a pop-up ice cream café by the beach. Can she turn her idea into reality, honour the legacy her family has left behind, and finally find the happiness she craves?

Summer at the Ice Cream Café is a warm and wonderful story about second chances, set in a sea-sde town in Pembrokeshire that is having as much of an identity crisis as the big-hearted Beca Valentino. Beca returns home regretting many of the decisions she has made, keen to make a new start in the place where she has realised she belongs all along.

However, going back to pick up the threads of a former life is never an easy thing to do. Swn Y Mor has changed, almost beyond recognition, as it is being gentrified to cater for the tastes of the tourists and second homers driving the locals out of their cottages. Worst of all, her grandparents' ice cream parlour, which was once the heart of the town, has been ruined by the man who did her wrong.

Although Beca has no intention of starting a new business enterprise, focusing on a quiet life as a foster carer for the children she could not have for herself, something within her stirs. She feel inspired keep the legacy of her family alive, and in working through the challenges she finds herself instrumental in bringing together friends and neighbours to bring life back to the community.

I loved how Beca opens up over the course of this story, learning to forgive herself for the mistakes she thinks she has made, and the way her relationship develops with Joe and Blake, the boys she welcomes into her home, is beautiful. There were many moments that brought a lump to my throat, and a delightful romantic thread, full of the necessary misunderstandings and longed-for declarations that make for the best love stories too.

Every little part of this tale comes out in the best possible way, with love, friendship, hope, and reconciliation, and the happiest of happy endings that made me sob. And not only that, but it is also full of delicious gelato. It is the perfect summer read.

Summer at the Ice Cream Cafe is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Penguin for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Tandem Collective UK for inviting me to be part of this readalong.

About the author:

Jo Thomas worked for many years as a reporter and producer, including time at Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Radio 2's The Steve Wright Show.

Jo's debut novel, The Oyster Catcher, was a runaway bestseller and won both the RNA Joan Hessayon Award and the Festival of Romance Best eBook Award. Her recent book Escape to the French Farmhouse was a #1 bestselling eBook and in every one of her novels 

Jo loves to explore new countries and discover the food produced there, both of which she thoroughly enjoys researching. Jo lives in Pembrokeshire with her husband and three children, where cooking and gathering around the kitchen table are a hugely important and fun part of their family life.