Meet me at Cupcake Cafe by Jenny Colgan

Issy Randal works in admin at a cut-throat real estate agency. She loves baking, having been taught by her grandfather, a passionate baker, whom she adores. Taking cupcakes to work, sharing with her friends during her commute and living a steady, peaceful life, Issy is satisfied with the way her life is going. Her grandfather is now older and needs help. She brings him to London from Manchester, where he lived all his life, so that he is near her in a nice nursing home. The only sad thing in her life is that her beloved granddad seems to be losing his memory and knowing that she can do nothing more to help him or to change the situation.

She has been seeing Graeme, one of the top guys at her work, although they had not gone open about it as office romances were not exactly encouraged. Issy had been comfortable in her easy and safe job. Issy is jolted out of her complacency when she is fired from her job, as a result of cut-backs. She is further hurt because clearly Graeme knew and did not feel the need to let her know. Not just that, she realized that everybody in the office knew that Graeme and her were going out, and Graeme knew they knew, and yet insisted on continuing the charade. Humiliated, and disillusioned, she walks out of her job and her relationship and finds solace in the cakes she bakes.

Shutting herself away in her house, stuffing herself with cake, and trying to forget the world, Issy is depressed and totally down.

Pushed by her friend Helena, she steps out tentatively and ends up leasing a place to open her ‘Cupcake Cafe’. But of course nothing is as straightforward as one would wish for. She finds opposition where she least expects, and help as well, from unexpected quarters.

So will she be able to translate her passion into business? Or will she go down in business, the same way she went in her previous career. You’ll have to read it to find out, but I guarantee you’ll have a blast along with Issy on her journey.

Issy’s story is interwoven with her friends and colleagues’s life and as you read it, you can’t but want everything to work out for everybody. The book also has recipes, written in a wonderfully quirky style. And the food descriptions are guranteed to have you drooling. So much so that I was itching to bake and ice cupcakes as I read the book.

A nice, fun read, something light for a summer evening read. Not so light on the tummy though, because it made me crave for all the cakes described there!