Hello my dear bookworm, today’s review is from the exotic anime land of Tokyo with endless cups of tea and some Asian spice. Happy Reading and discovering new stories.
Book
Title – The Little Teashop in Tokyo
Author -Julie Caplin
Publisher – One More Chapter, HarperCollins
Genre: Contemporary romance
Tour Dates: 11th – 20th June 2020
Publication Date: 11th June 2020
Standalone book in the Romantic Escapes series
Story
Grab your passport and escape to a land of dazzling skyscrapers, steaming bowls of comforting noodles, and a page-turning love story that will make you swoon!
For travel blogger Fiona, Japan has always been top of her bucket list so when she wins an all-expenses paid trip, it looks like her dreams are coming true.
Until she arrives in vibrant, bustling Tokyo and comes face-to-face with the man who broke her heart ten years ago, gorgeous photographer Gabe.
Fiona can’t help but remember the heartache of their last meeting but amidst the temples and clouds of soft pink cherry blossoms, can Fiona and Gabe start to see life – and each other – differently?
My Thoughts
Fiona Hanning is a photography student at a London University. She is fascinated with everything Japan and wants to visit one day. When an opportunity to do the same knocks on her door she gives in to her pushing friends and applies for the competition which will make her Japanese dream true. On winning the photography contest she gets a 2 week sponsored trip and mentorship from the best photographer who will mentor her during her stay.
On reaching Japan though happy to be in a country she’s always dreamed of there is a change of plans which makes her rethink of the whole trip as she comes face to face with a past she much rather forget. As her promised mentor deals with family bereavement she is assigned a mentor whom she knows from her high school days. As she reaches for strength in herself to face someone she is not only embarrassed to be around but also attracted Fiona realizes he hardly seems to recognize her from a decade back.
Fiona’s local host and competition coordinator is a Japanese university professor and his family. The professor and his wife are a warm couple who have a beautiful home for Fiona to stay during her trip and the wife, Haruka owns a traditional Japanese teashop right below the house. The teashop, the family and their house soon calm Fiona and make her look forward to her time in Japan. The mentor, Gabriel, however tests her patience at every step with his detached and sour attitude making it clear he is not to happy to be mentoring her.
As she deals with Gabriel’s attitude which burns her every time they spend time together she finds the company and the time spent with the family soothes her. She finds calm, joy and inspiration with the family in their house, garden and the teashop. Finding strength and support from her host family she soon puts Gabriel in his place and he reluctantly agrees to a truce and makes an effort to mentor her and help her with her photography assignments,
All the while Fiona and Gabriel are fighting their attraction towards each other before they finally confess and give into their feelings for each other.
The story is set in a period of 2 weeks and is packed with experiences of Japanese culture and the characters doing some self introspection. For most of the book it is all about Fiona having wonderful cultural experiences in Japan which was the enjoyable part if the story for me. All the Japanese rituals, sightseeing, the host family and their role in the story were all a brilliant reading experience. Towards the end of the story the lead couple finally sorts out their lives and thanks to their 2 weeks together in Japan they find their way back to each other. The Little Tea Shop in Japan was indeed the meeting point for their lives ahead and a wonderful place to find what they were looking for in life after being lost for a while.
Pick this title up to enjoy some couch travelling to Japan complete with sightseeing, photography and the quintessential Japanese cultural experience.
Author
Jules Wake announced at the age of ten that she planned to be a writer. Along the way she was diverted by the glamorous world of PR and worked on many luxury brands, taking journalists on press trips to awful places like Turin, Milan, Geneva, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and occasionally losing the odd member of the press in an airport. This proved fabulous training for writing novels as it provided her with the opportunity to eat amazing food, drink free alcohol, hone her writing skills on press releases and to research European cities for her books.She writes best-selling warm-hearted contemporary fiction for HarperImpulse. Under her pen name, Julie Caplin, her thirteenth novel, The Little Teashop in Tokyo will be published in ebook and paperback this June.Social Media Links–Twitter @JulieCaplin @Juleswake
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JulieCaplinAuthor
Reviewed by Bee
