You're eating one of your five a year

 

Who doesn't love a candy shop?  Not only can you find your personal favorites, but there's also the tantalizing possibility of discovering something new and delicious.  That is if the shop is open and the stock is fresh.  Unfortunately, Rosie Hopkins didn't find that when she left London for the country town of Lipton to help out in her great aunt Lilian's shop.  

Rosie enjoyed her job as auxiliary nurse, even though she didn't have a permanent position and with her lack of full nursing qualifications, she was frequently given the most unpleasant jobs around the hospital.  Her relationship with her boyfriend of seven years, Gerard was . . . fine, no really!  Even though he showed no inclination toward proposing and lately seemed to have gotten a bit too comfortable.  

When Rosie's mother calls from Australia and guilt-trips her into helping out Lilian, Rosie hopes that a little distance from Gerard might make him realize how much he misses her.  So Rosie hops on a bus and heads north to the countryside to help out.  Lilian, at 87, is experiencing some health issues, but Rosie and there rest of the family had no idea that she had pretty much abandoned running the family candy shop.  When Rosie arrives, it is dusty and most of the remaining wares are well past their sell-by dates.

As Rosie takes charge of Lilian's life and business, she begins to make friends in town and catches the eye of several interesting men.  Interspersed with Rosie's adventures are flashbacks of Lilian's life, explaining why she never married or left the village.  There are also plenty of comments on particular sweets as well as candy in general.  Several recipes are included so that if the lure of the sweet treats gets to be too much, you can whip some up for yourself.

I was enjoying the book and all the talk of sweets until near the end when it suddenly took a turn into teenaged romance territory.  Rosie was having her flirtations and re-examining her relationship with Gerard, but suddenly there was a lot of giggling, "you really like him, don't yous," and stern advice from matronly ladies thrown about.  When pretty much the whole village turns out to help Rosie get ready for "the ball," I realized the book was aiming for a different direction than I had thought.  It was a good enough, if predictable story, but some of the elements were just a bit too cringey for my tastes.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of Sweetshop of Dreams from NetGalley in exchange for this review