Summer at the Comfort Food Café (The Comfort Food Café, Book 1)

Debbie Johnson

Apr 2016 · The Comfort Food Café Book 1 · Sold by HarperCollins UK

About this ebook

‘Full of quirky characters, friendship and humour, you will devour this engaging and heartwarming novel in one sitting’ Sunday Express S Magazine

Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you raid the pantry in the middle of the night...

The Comfort Food Cafe is perched on a windswept clifftop at what feels like the edge of the world, serving up the most delicious cream teas; beautifully baked breads, and carefully crafted cupcakes. For tourists and locals alike, the ramshackle cafe overlooking the beach is a beacon of laughter, companionship, and security – a place like no other; a place that offers friendship as a daily special, and where a hearty welcome is always on the menu.

For widowed mum-of-two Laura Walker, the decision to uproot her teenaged children and make the trek from Manchester to Dorset for the summer isn’t one she takes lightly, and it’s certainly not winning her any awards from her kids, Nate and Lizzie. Even her own parents think she’s gone mad.

Her new job at the cafe, and the hilarious people she meets there, give Laura the chance she needs to make new friends; to learn to be herself again, and – just possibly – to learn to love again as well.

For her, the Comfort Food Cafe doesn’t just serve food – it serves a second chance to live her life to the full...

What readers are saying about Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe:

‘My new favourite author’ – Holly Martin, bestselling author of Summer at Rose Island

'A lovely, emotion-filled, giggle-inducing story' – Sunday Times bestselling author Milly Johnson

‘A book of hope and solidarity, friendship and humour and the belief that everything might just turn out okay after all’ – Sophie, Reviewed the Book

‘If this book had arms it would grab you and pull you in to the most amazing book ever... just magical’ – Lisa Talks About

‘An engaging, entertaining and loveable book’ – Rae’s Reads

‘I wish I could actually go there... an original story and it has such a romantic ending’ – With Love for Books

Ratings and reviews

Laura Walker is the widowed mother of two teenagers. After her childhood sweetheart and husband dies after falling off a ladder she falls into a pit of gloom and despair. As she tries to rebuild her life she answers a quirky advert for a summer cook at a Dorset seaside cafe with a TMI letter spewing all her anxiety and family traumas. Cherie is the hipy dippy owner of the Comfort Food Cafe and a holiday village of small cottages, quirkily named after 1970s rock legends. She offers Laura and her children a home for the summer together with a job. If you love the idea of a misfit group of individuals being brought together by an elderly hippy mother earth figure who runs her cafe like a community drop in centre, preparing their favourite dishes for her regular local customers, an annual fancy dress party involving half the village for an octogenarian farmer, elderly labradors and ice-creams galore then this is the novel for you. This is like all your memories of holidays when you were a child rolled into one, sunny days, sparkling water, cake and ice-cream every day. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Absolutely gorgeous! It made me tear up quiet a few times and it made me dream of summer and the sea. And it made me wish that there would be such a homey cafe in my town! Heaps and heaps of positive, nostalgic and bittersweet emotions! Thank you!

I loved this book. My dad was born and bred in Lyme Regis so know that area well. It draws you in and I wish I could go and work in a café by the beach now but unfortunately have to sit in a boring office.

About the author

Debbie Johnson is a best-selling author who lives and works in Liverpool, where she divides her time between writing, caring for a small tribe of children and animals, and not doing the housework.
She worked as a journalist for many years, until she decided it would be more fun to make up her own stories than to tell other people’s. After trying her hand at pretty much every genre of writing other than Westerns and spy dramas, she has settled on women’s fiction that seems to make people laugh and make people cry, often at the same time.
Her books include The Birthday That Changed Everything, Pippa’s Cornish Dream, and Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe, all published by HarperCollins. She also ghost-wrote model and presenter Abbey Clancy’s debut novel, Remember My Name.
Follow her on twitter @debbiemjohnson, or at www.facebook.com/debbiejohnsonauthor – but be warned, she mainly talks about dogs.