‘Summer at The French Bakery’ by Jo Thomas: An Easy Reading Escapist Romance for Food Lovers
Jo Thomas is back with another cosy romance about food. With each novel, Thomas transports readers to a new country to discover the food that makes it special. With her latest offering, Summer at The French Bakery, Jo Thomas serves a heartwarming and delicious contemporary novel exploring second chances, community resilience, and the sheer courage required to completely reinvent your life.
The story follows Juliet; a British wife and mother of two adult children who has always played it safe. Now, after recovering from a serious illness she realises it’s time to do something for herself, something that both scares and thrills her. But, when she buys a run down old watermill in France, with hopes to transform it into a tea room, her tranquil new start is quickly kneaded into something far more ambitious. As she navigates through the bureaucracy of obtaining a working visa in France, she finds herself talked into breathing new life into the village by reopening the mothballed boulangerie (bakery). But Juliet doesn’t know anything about making bread — and when it comes to bread the French are particular! Will she succeed?
Summer at the French Bakery is an absolute joy to read. If you’re looking for something easy, fun, and uplifting to read you’ll adore this new Jo Thomas novel. The novel follows Thomas’ winning formula delivering readers a tantalising combination of food, setting, and romance. Her talent for describing food and scenery is unmatched. Her descriptions of the baguettes paired with cheese, fresh tomatoes, and authentic butter will have you salivating and hanging on every word. Then there’s the intoxicating descriptions of the charming village setting — this cosy read is a real holiday for the mind with new places to discover on every page.
This Jo Thomas adventure does an excellent job of blending witty cultural clashes with an entertaining, high-stakes turf war against a
formidable local rival determined to protect his automated bread-vending machine. It’s a slow-burn romance that will have you completely entranced from the very first page.
Published by Pan Macmillan, Summer at the French Bakery by Jo Thomas is now available in South Africa. Stockists include Exclusive Books at R409.
