Book review: The Seafront Tea Rooms by Vanessa Greene
16 Nov
The Seafront Tea Rooms is a peaceful hideaway, away from the bustle of the seaside, and in this quiet place a group of women find exactly what they’ve been searching for.
Charismatic journalist Charlotte is on a mission to scope out Britain’s best tea rooms. She knows she’s found something special in the Seafront Tea Rooms but is it a secret she should share? Kathryn, a single mother whose only sanctuary is the ‘Seafront’, convinces Charlie to keep the place out of her article by agreeing to join her on her search. Together with another regular, Seraphine, a culture-shocked French au pair with a passion for pastry-making, they travel around the country discovering quaint hideaways and hidden gems. But what none of them expect is for their journey to surprise them with discoveries of a different kind . . .
Full of romance, tea and cake, The Seafront Tea Rooms is a heart-warming tale about the strength found in true friendship.
I loved Vanessa Greene’s first novel The Vintage Teacup Club (it was one of my books of the year for 2012!) and the subsequent follow up short story. So I was highly anticipating this new book and I wasn’t disappointed – The Seafront Tea Rooms is again one of my favourite books of the year and with it’s heartwarming story of friendship, tea and cake is the perfect read to curl up with this winter.
Vanessa has a knack for creating characters that you want to be friends with and I took to Charlie, Kat and Seraphine straight away. Being a mum, Kat and her son Leo’s story resonated with me a lot – one of my boys is about the same age as Leo and I thought he was very well written. Vanessa cleverly captures the little things that children do and say and I could just imagine Leo on the sands in Scarborough.
Which brings me nicely onto the setting for this book. I grew up not far up the coast from Scarborough and I’ve spent many a sunny and even wintry day out at the seaside resort. It was so lovely to see this familiar territory in a book! The northern seaside is often overlooked in favour of Devon or Cornwall so this was a book that I immediately took to my heart.
In addition to my love for its location, The Seafront Tea Rooms has a cast of interesting and believable characters with well developed back stories. Kat is a single mum, trying to make ends meet and to give her son the best. Seraphine is a French au pair trying to work out who she is and how that fits with her family’s ideals. Finally Charlie is a high flying food journalist whose sister is having her own family issues and who finds herself in Scarborough trying to help.
I loved the way Vanessa brought the three women together through their love of a good afternoon tea. The uniting factor for the three women is The Seafront Tea Rooms run by the lovely Letty who reminded me of my gran and is such a warm and caring character. Be warned! This is a novel that will make you long for a cup of tea and a big slice of cake! As Kat, Charlie and Seraphine visit a series of wonderfully described tea rooms to help Charlie with an article she is writing, Vanessa gives her characters plenty to form their new friendship around with romance, drama and secrets in the mix.
I also found it refreshing to find a book where the male leads were on the whole written in a positive light. This is a very romantic story and relationship issues in each woman’s life were sensitively handled and realistic. I was rooting for them all to find a happy ending and as the story came to an end I felt like I’d made new friends and didn’t want to leave them.
Another delicious hit for Vanessa Greene – I highly recommend a visit to The Seafront Tea Rooms as soon as possible!
5/5
The Seafront Tea Rooms is out now in paperback and ebook formats.
I’d like to thank the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book.
Find out more about Vanessa and her writing at: http://vanessagreene.co.uk/
Sounds similar to milly Johnson’s teashop on the corner which I loved.