Iced Coffee Dreams

[asakiyume]

The fourth and last of Jennifer Montgomery's wonderful coffee shop romances is out, Iced Coffee Dreams, starring Wynne (short for Eowyn--her parents are die-hard Tolkien fans), who's working part-time at Campus Coffee over the summer. She has dreams of opening her own cafe one day, but she's prone to anxiety ... and she finds it impossible to say no to problem-customer Shannon, who comes in all too often with a "Hey girl, hey," and a request for extra caramel, milk on the side, an extra punch to her loyalty card--you get the picture. If she can't handle Shannon, will she ever be able to manage a cafe on her own?

Enter coworker Parker, who's reserved, but friendly. In fact, he seems to want to spend time with Wynne. He's interested in her dreams and has ideas for how to build her confidence.

All the details in this story are just perfect. Every time Wynne imagines a different type of cafe, I was thinking, "Yes, I want to go there." (Traveling pop-up cafe? Check. Garden cafe in an actual garden? Check! hot-air-balloon cafe? Ooh, Check! Tree house cafe? Check check check! I definitely want to go to that one.)

And then there was the moment when Wynne's friend Kayleen describes what she expected Indiana to be like:

“Infinite corn, bonfire parties, two boys in a mud-spattered truck give us a lift to the ol’ swimming hole where we all drink beer out of red Solo cups while dancing in the headlights of a circle of pick-ups,” Kayleen said.

“Gosh,” Wynne said, all false innocence, “You must have listened to a lot of country music to come up with a list like that.”

“It’s not my fault,” Kayleen said. “My mom played it all the time.”

This is a sweet romance, where the pleasure is in watching the characters get to know each other and watching Wynne learn to face tricky situations successfully. The characters are all **very** likable and relatable--it's very fun to spend some time in summer with them, and RIGHT NOW in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway is precisely the story's setting--long, hot summer.

Highly recommended!

Comments

[kore]

Ahaha, that is also mass pop culture's version of Iowa (my husband will never forget Whedon had a character say "I'm from Iowa, we drive four hours for a high school football game") (like, you can drive OUT OF IOWA altogether on the interstate in about four hours but anyway)

[asakiyume]

LOL: Iowa is clearly bigger in the popular imagination than IRL.

[kore]

And is made out of 1) football fields 2) corn 3) cows

Altho I got used to characters being from "Santa Fe" as "somewhere exotic." That was before Breaking Bad. Now everyone's all, I WANT TO GO TO ALBUQUERQUE! I'm just like, I lived there for four years. You do not want to go to Albuquerque.

Albuquerque

[asakiyume]

Yeah, my sister-in-law grew up there and makes it seem, well, pretty ordinary.

Re: Albuquerque

[kore]

And when I was there, there was no IT industry! I understand Albuqerque has Intel factories now or something (altho we almost had Silicon Desert, thank you Bill Gates). NM is very pretty, but tourist economies suck.