The title of this book is slightly misleading as it doesn't focus that much on the café or tea! However it was an easy read with plenty of twists.

I wish that the focus of the plot wasn't on the love story as I felt it got in the way of a good story line with all the past family secrets and at times it was infuriating with the back and forth. I found myself skim reading those parts!

I particularly enjoyed the epilogue and seeing everything come together, I actually found myself more drawn to the supporting characters than the main protagonist, Abigail.

I think this would be a good beach read but I wouldn't tell anyone to rush out and buy it sadly.

The cover of this book is very eye-catching. I expected (just from the title) that it would be a lighthearted story about people who use the café as their base to meet up when chatting and sharing secrets. The title itself is a great play on words (rosie lee meaning "tea"in Cockney slang) and that was another reason I was interested in the book. The catchy totle.

It's not a full-blown romcom, although I felt the atmosphere at Rosie Lee's was true-to- life and what you would expect of a small café in a gentrified area of London. I'll admit, the first few pages did pull me in, and made me laugh in some parts, so that's a bonus. The rest seems more like a family and life/ relationship drama which was fine, as I enjoy the genre.

Do not be fooled, though as the story is so much nore than Rosie Lee's café itself. This is just a setting and ends up being the workplace of Abby who is 38 and who has a daughter who is about to go away to University. Abby has had a hard life so far. Pregnant at 19, she has an ongoing bad relationship with her mother and her first love, Jack, left her to bring her daughter up alone.

She's left Rosie Lee's Café by the elderly couple who used to own it, so that gives her a place to work and live, as she lives in the flat above. She does all she can trying to make ends meet and live her life, Until Jack suddenly reappears.

The characters are well-fleshed out and interesting, but I felt Abby was a little immature in how she reacted to life and in how she related to her daughter. It was like she felt herself incapable of leading life without her presence. I can understand this in a way seeing as Abby had bought her up alone, but she seemed a bit too whingey for me to really like her. I'd have liked her to be more of a herione.

Thanks to all the characters and the struggle of Abby and her family to get along no matter what life throws at them this book was an interesting one. The pace is fast and the struggles are realistic. The book is more about family and uncovering secrets than the title suggests. It's worth the read though and I liked discovering the secrets.

Secrets and Tea at Rosie Lee's is one of those books where you are taken on a journey. I always like this type of book and I was happy to accompany Abby on her journey.

Thanks to Jane Lacey-Crane and Aria for my ARC in exchange for an honest and voluntary review as well as an opportunity to take part in the blog tour for the title. This is the author's debut novel.

3.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the Publisher, Aria for this review copy given in exchange for an honest review. Also thank you to Melanie from Aria for organising the Blog Tour!

Welcome to Rosie Lee’s. A no frills café in the heart of the East End of London. There’s no fancy bread or funny milk here. What the café’s owner, Abby offers in good old fashioned fry-ups! Unfortunately, cooked breakfasts alone doesn’t pay the bills. Not only does Abby’s café need a serious makeover, but so does Abby. Reaching the forties faster than she would like to admit, Abby grasps her teapots with both hands when Jack Chance, her ‘One That Got Away’ reappears back in the café. Can things be on the up?

My first book by this author and I did enjoy it! It wasn’t quite what I was expecting as I imagined it to be more of a ‘chick-lit’ read than it actually was! It was more of a book of lost love, family and growing old! Abby was a lovely character and I loved the idea that the café wasn’t in some beachside position or trendy London street, but in a run-down area of London. I had a picture in my mind of what it looked like and could imagine how difficult it must have been to make it a successful business. I wasn’t keen on Jack’s character and really wanted him to just go away and leave Abby alone – she didn’t need him even though she obviously wanted him!

This was definitely an enjoyable read and it could have fitted really well into an episode of Eastenders! It is quite a long book though, but it’s is perfect as a beach read, lounging around in the sun! Will definitely keep my eye out for more by this author!

It took me a while to get in to this book, but once I did I enjoyed reading it.
Characters who are likeable and some twists in the story to keep you guessing.

3.5 Stars

Rosie Lee’s is a teashop, just outside the renewed and regentrified area in the East End of London, a place that hasn’t changed much since it opened and served basic coffee, tea, cakes, and a place to chat and gather. Abby has owned the little shop since inheriting it and the flat abovestairs from Rosie and Tom, an older couple who provided stability, friendship and comfort when her life went topsy turvy. A difficult relationship with her mother, her daughter soon to leave for university, and a determination to ignore/stay away from all romantic entanglements, Abby has plenty of resentment, issues and a not so healthy tendency to overthink situations and choices before half-heartedly committing to a plan of action. In her mid-thirties, Abby was frustrating, contradictory, afraid of change, moody and often far too willing to be snappy and churlish when she felt threatened or questioned- a situation that happened often.

But an unexpected encounter with her first love at an event she catered dessert for her best friend’s new venture fueled her frequent forays into ‘what I lost’ land’ – a serious list of difficult moments, choices and secrets that would affect her life for years. With her father’s disappearance with no explanation when she was fifteen, followed closely by her mother’s breakdown and two year isolation, her grandparent’s aggrieved approach to ‘watching out’ for Abby and her older brother Matt, and the obvious whispers. Abby was in the middle of a family crisis, those angsty teen years, and then, Jack her best friend and first love, leaves without explanation and never contacts her again.

So yes, Abby had plenty to deal with, from a tense and defensive relationship with her mother, a café that is barely making a profit, her daughter soon leaving for university, her best friend Liz pushing her to meet a man and date, and then Jack back in the picture. She deals with all of this by ignoring the big issues, staying busy, and pushing any questions she had out of her consciousness. But her mother’s sudden death, followed shortly by the return of her long lost father, also dead, shed some ‘light’ on the piles of secrets I this family – most that had been kept from Abby to “keep her safe”. It was no wonder that emotionally she was more fourteen than closing in on forty – and that combination of emotional cluelessness combined with some erratic choices, almost non-existent self-esteem, and the here and gone Jack, with some not so vague threats from an ‘associate’ of her more than slightly criminal father – the issues were many, and often felt as if coals were coming to Newcastle. Each question brought more clarifications, more justifications for Abby to be how she was, and for her frustration with everyone ‘taking care’ of her: even as some did a crap job of it – intentions be damned. Not a laugh a minute story, even as there are situations and some commentary from Abby that does bring a laugh – but it was the length of time between meeting Abby and finally starting to see the secrets come to light that made the first half of this book feel far longer. Then the answers and the ‘adult’ back and forth with Jack, his feeling for her and hers for him, more secrets and threats, questions and regrets – all came one upon another in waves of information – it was no wonder she started to have anxiety attacks,. But, the steadiness of friends (Liz, Flo) and her brother Matt, as well as a solid and quite lovely relationship with her daughter did show that, despite her determination and occasional (or not so) strops, Abby is well-loved and cared about – even when that caring goes to levels of secrecy that were unhealthy for all.

Crane’s writing style is very conversational and easy to enjoy – and this debut was a challenging one with the multitude of questions, secrets, issues and personalities, and she managed most in ways that felt both appropriate to what we come to understand is Abby, and still give readers the answers so needed. Full of ‘one more thing’ moments, there were times when yet another issue made me want to scream- but, like life is like that sometime- and showing Abby doing her best at the moment with the hand she was dealt, supported and loved by her friends and family, that was the takeaway from this story. I’m curious to see more from this author, hoping that her next characters will encourage similar emotional reactions to Abby.

I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

Review first appeared at <a href=” https://wp.me/p3OmRo-9Lq /” > <a> I am, Indeed</a>

This has turned out to be a tough book to review, as I have mixed feelings about it. I’m still tussling with it a bit but, for better or worse, these are my thoughts.

There is a proliferation of books set in cafes at the moment and from the title, cover and blurb of this book you might be expecting it to follow certain conventions that have sprung up around these books, but you’d be wrong to do so. The cafe setting is completely incidental to the storyline, it really is not the focus or the driving force of the plot. I am not saying this as a positive or a negative – it depends entirely on why you have picked up the book.

This is a book about family and how complicated those relationships can be and how it affects every aspect of our lives. Abby’s family life growing up can best be described as dysfunctional. Her father disappeared when she was in her teens, her relationship with her mother was always difficult and her best friend and first love, Jack, moved away just when she needed him most. Abby fell pregnant at 19 and ended up with a baby to raise alone. However, Abby has pulled herself up by her bootstraps, determined to give her daughter Lucy a more stable upbringing than the one she had, despite being a single parent. She has succeeded in doing this with the help of her brother, but Abby’s romantic life is non-existent, her relationship with her mother irreparable and her cafe in financial difficulty. The Jack walks back into her life and Abby’s life becomes even more complicated.

As Abby struggles with unresolved feelings for Jack and tries to find out why he left without a word all those years before, the secrets that Abby’s family have been keeping begin to unravel and she has to reassess everything she thought she understood about her past.

This is a book that has some real emotional depth and explores some complicated issues. I was pleasantly surprised at the places the plot took me. However, the problem I had was that, at the same time, the main character Abby displays some very contradictory superficial and immature behaviour that I found difficult to reconcile with the other aspects of her story. In addition, I was struggling to buy into Jack’s behaviour as a sympathetic romantic lead. I will try and expand on this in a way that will make sense without containing any spoilers.

Abby has managed to build a stable life for herself and her daughter from a young age without the support of either of her parents or a partner. Her daughter has turned out to be a wonderful young woman, so Abby has obviously dealt with her less-than-perfect situation in a way that has proved positive for her daughter despite huge obstacles. When all the family secrets start to come out of the woodwork, she manages to take them in her stride and deal with them fairly sensibly and rationally, which would lead you to conclude she has a certain level of emotional maturity.

At the same time her actions around Jack exhibit the opposite. She acts like a teenager, unable to make up her mind how she feels from one minute to the next, egging him on then pushing him away. This behaviour is repeated over and over to the point where it started to become irritating. She seems incapable of having an honest adult discussion with him about the past and how she feels. Her reasoning for not wanting to be with him mostly seemed to be that he was too rich and good looking for her. This was coupled with far too much focus on how physically attractive she found him every time he came near her – the point was laboured to the point of tedium – and I felt that this did Abby an injustice. I actually believe that she has more emotional depth and maturity than that. I could understand her insecurities about re-starting a relationship with an old flame given the changes the intervening years had wrought on her body. I could understand that she might not trust him not to abandon her again given his past form. These were motivations that were hinted at and would make more sense as valid reasons for avoiding getting involved to me but they were undermined by the rest of her thought processes which seemed inauthentic for a woman of her age and experience. I don’t know if the author was deliberately giving the impression that Abby’s romantic development was stunted as a result of her circumstances, maybe that is the generous assumption to make. I’m still undecided.

Jack’s motivations were even harder to fathom. He hasn’t seen Abby for 25 years but then, following a chance meeting, he is suddenly obsessed with her to the point of refusing to leave her alone, despite frequent requests by her that he do so. We are supposed to believe that he has been in love with her for the whole intervening period, but he has never made any efforts to contact her during that time, despite the fact that she is living in almost exactly the same place as she did the last time he saw her and would be very easy to track down. . I think his sudden relentless pursuit of her was supposed to be romantic and protective but he was so persistent in the face of rejection that it bordered on the edge of stalker-ish, especially given the less than savoury behaviour of her ex. My feelings about him were ambiguous at best.

This book moves on at a cracking pace with plenty of events thrown in to push the story along. In fact, so much had happened by the time I was fifty per cent of the way through that I wondered what could possibly be left to carry the book on to the end but it did not let up. I really enjoyed the momentum of this book and the twists and turns of the plot, it definitely packed more punch that the gentle food-based story you might be expecting from its wrappings. I think it was a shame that some of the emotional developments didn’t match up to the rest of the story.

This is the author’s debut novel and it shows real promise, despite some of the issues I identified above. I think this is a book that will appeal differently to different readers and someone else picking up this book will read it in another way and not have some of the misgivings I had. I recommend that you read it and reach your own conclusions. It is a complex story that deserves attention and feedback and is more than the sum of its cover and title.

I apologise for the length and rambling nature of this review, I think it is an accurate reflection of my many and complicated thoughts about this book.

Originally posted on the blog-- Fiction and Frosting.
Where to begin? Well, the dying cafe business wasn’t really the focal point rather than the title and synopsis suggests. Instead, it was about family, first love and overcoming the past.

Now that doesn’t sound so bad, does it? It was a really unexpected read. The story went deeper than the cheesy title. Which was great, proving yet again that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Abigail Cowan was a thirty-something woman who lived all her life in the same place in London. She was knocked up really young, her family has kept her father’s whereabouts a secret for the last twenty years, and the cafe she inherited was lacking what it needed to survive—customers. So when her first love, Jack, came back from the States to do business, the missing spark in her life finally ignites.

Now I know, it sounds like the typical The One That Got Away story, but what I loved about this book was that it was more than that. It was about family. Abigail's family was not perfect. They've kept secrets, they've neglected, but they still fight to keep all of them together despite everything. Which is what family is all about. This book perfectly portrayed that image and message to the readers.

But this is hard for me to say; I loved all the secondary characters and their relationship rather than our protagonist—Abigail. She came off as really whiny for a mature woman. I found her emotionally dependent to others, especially to her daughter, Lucy, who was going away for college.

She kept saying that she is not a teenager anymore, and shouldn’t be fooling around with Jack, yet she can’t handle just being straight and honest with him like the mature adult she supposedly is. She was pushing him away for about a third of the book and it got really annoying.

What drove me to finish was the plot itself. The secrets were really intriguing but I didn’t really expect to have that much lies in one household, especially when their ultimate goal was to protect.

Anyway, I guess this book will stay neutral for me, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. In the end, it all worked out for the characters and the story so cheers to that!

If you expect this to be another tale of a modern cafe in a beautiful setting, then you're way off the mark. This is a deeper read, set in an area of London ripe for regeneration and a family who have had to fight and struggle for all that they have.

Abby owns Rosie Lee's, a traditional cafe in the heart of the East End. She can't afford to compete with all the new style coffee shops and is barely making ends meet. She knows something is going to have to give, but is putting off any decisions until she sees her daughter Lucy set off to Bristol for university. As a single parent, and one with a poor relationship with her own mother, she has put all her energies into making Lucy aware that she is loved, always. Her brother Matt has been a fabulous support ever since she had Lucy and it has brought the siblings closer.

There are plenty of secrets revealed in this novel .. Abby is not aware of lots of things and she isn't the only one. Neither was I! Just when you think things have settled, another one comes crawling out of the woodwork! This is a well-crafted novel, carefully plotted, beautifully written and including mystery, romance, family secrets, sadness and so much more. It is a fabulous read - one which will keep you glued to the page and have you rooting for Abby and her future. Listed as 'a frank, funny, feel-good look at grown-up life and love' this is one book which lives up to it's publicity. Moving along at quite a pace, never leaving time to ponder what's coming next as the revelations spill. Definitely a must read, and one I'm very happy to recommend.

My grateful thanks to author Jane Lacey-Crane for posting about her novel on twitter which alerted me to submit my request via NetGalley, and also to publishers Aria for approving my copy. This is my honest, original and unbiased review.

I really enjoyed this book, new author for me and really exceeded expectations. A love story but with a totally diff story line to to ones I read. I would definatley be reading more from this author again

Hhhmmm.....there were elements of this book which I really enjoyed and there were other elements which I didn’t like at all. Abigail’s character felt off to me....self sufficient, strong and not always likeable, or a hard done to single parent who is kind or a disinterested daughter, or a freaked out sister.....well she’s all of these and more. The story is a little too long with a few too many twists and turns buts it’s readable and enjoyable. The thing I dislike intensely is the male lead Jack. Who is just out and out creepy and stalkerish in his pursuit of Abigail and would make most sane women call the police. Just no.

I went into this book not knowing what to expect and I really enjoyed this book by Jane Lacey-Crane. Going along with Abigail and her journey - it was obvious she had a hard life growing up. She inherits a cafe from an elderly couple and that becomes her life, running the cafe! Then Jack shows up, who she hasn't seen in 20 years. Lots of family secrets throughout. I really enjoyed the whole book, from start to finish. I received this complimentary copy from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Abby's life is just plodding along. A single mom, with her daughter just about to leave for college,her first love suddenly re-enters her life. When her mom passes away all the family's secrets and lies unravel. Is there a place in her life for Jack?
I really enjoyed this book and read it in one sitting.

An overall good story, it does suffer from a few weak areas that don't take much away however from the overall pleasant experience that is reading Jave Lacey-Crane's Secrets and Tea at Rosie Lee's.

This book needs a better title. The main character was always drinking coffee, rarely tea. The cafe name was hardly mentioned and the story did not revolve around the cafe itself as the title would suggest.

This is not a romantic comedy, it's too whiny for that. The story overall wasn't bad but also wasn't great. The plot was predictable.

I found the main character unbelievable. At 38 with an 18 year old kid and having split from the kids father when the kid was young, the lead Abigail states that the kids father was the only man she ever slept with. So basically no romantic history since her ex beat her and treated her like crap. Then her childhood crush/first love shows back up in her life and suddenly she's all about getting into his pants. After having dated basically no one for almost 18 years. Makes no sense.

2.5 stars

A hard to put down story. Reading the blurb about the book, I expected a typical OTA romance, of the one who got away kinda a story. Reading about the mysteries of her own past didn't really register, but obviously were a big part of the story. Abby is a single mother in London, raising a young woman who will be leaving for university in the fall. Abby runs a cafe, that is slowly fading away. When she caters desserts for an old friend, she meets up with Jack, her first boyfriend. He is a rich American now and is there when her mother dies, and then when she learns her father has also died. Secrets start slowly spilling out, and it comes back to haunt them. Trying to juggle it all, and with sparks flying between them, it makes for a great story. Don't want to give too much away, but really enjoyed this book and author. Would highly recommend.