Christmas At The Board Game Cafe (The Little Board Game Cafe Book Four) by Jennifer Page

 

Christmas at the Board Game Cafe (The Little Board Game Cafe Book Four) by Jennifer Page.

Published 10th October by Aria.

From the cover of the book:

Kate seems to have it all – wonderful friends, a successful career, and an idyllic life in the quirky Yorkshire town of Essendale. But under the surface, Kate is lonely and yearns for family – especially at Christmas.

With the holidays approaching and the town desperate to attract more visitors, Kate plans an enchanting living Advent calendar to feature the local businesses. But Kate's picture-perfect plans take an unexpected turn when her ex-boyfriend returns, determined to create the pivotal Christmas Eve display.

Caught between a new spark and an old flame, Kate must pull off her festive campaign and protect her heart. Will she let go of the past and embrace the future she dreams of?

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Over the past few years Kate has seen her friends find love in the Yorkshire towns of Essendale and Hebbleswick, but somehow she has never been able to find her own happy ending, despite being something of a dating guru.

Christmas is approaching, and Kate longs for more than the dreary festivities with her distant father, but her romantic prospects are looking thin. At least she has a project to keep her busy - creating a series of special Advent windows to put these little towns on the map, and hopefully give the local economy a boost.

Unexpectedly, this project brings with it a possible love match with a person she had not considered before. On paper, they make the perfect couple, but Kate is unsure - especially when an old flame appears on the scene and sets her heart a-flutter... Can Kate make peace with her past and allow herself to open her heart up to the kind of love she deserves?

Welcome to the fourth lovely adventure in the world of the Little Board Game Cafe, which revisits the life of marketing executive Kate, a character that has always been on the sidelines when it comes to finding happiness for herself, even though she has been on hand to help her friends make their own love matches in the previous three books. Feeling a bit depressed about her lack of romantic possibilities in the midst of all the happy couples who have got together around the Little Board Game Cafe set, Kate is a bit down in the dumps. However, her marketing brain is as full of sparkling ideas as ever, and her Advent window initiative gets the community fired up in more ways than one. 

As the community come together to back Kate's ideas, loads of familiar faces from the series put in a welcome appearance - one in a role which Kate really does not expect. However, she finds herself torn between heart and head when an old flame turns up out of the blue and makes her reconsider how the past has shaped her ideas of love, to seriously poignant effect.

Page pulls out all the stops in this super festive tale, plucking your heartstrings with a practised hand as she throws in all the necessary twists and turns in Kate's journey towards happiness, and floods the story with her favourite themes of friendship, family, loneliness, love, and the many issues that come with living in small rural communities. The advent theme works so well with the romantic suspense that keeps the will-they-won't-they vibes going strong throughout too - all the way to the most gorgeous of endings that makes good use of the final window display to hit the heart-melting sweet spot to perfection. 

Festive, fabulous, and a thoroughly enjoyable sob-fest of a fourth instalment to the series!

Christmas at the Board Game Cafe is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Aria for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Jennifer Page wrote her first novel - a book about ponies - when she was eight. These days she prefers to write romance. When she isn't writing, Jennifer can usually be found playing board games which are the inspiration for her first novel. She has worked as a television producer, a music teacher and has even run a children's opera company. She now lives near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire with her husband and his large collection of games.