Bogormen

Title: The Tea House on Mulberry Street
Author: Sharon Owen
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 8/10
# pages: 357
Date read: April, 2009

Summary: Muldoon's Tea Rooms, beloved for the cozy atmosphere and luscious desserts, has started looking a bit outdated-and the same could be said about the proprietors, Penny and Daniel Stanley. After seventeen years, their marriage has started to wear a little thin, even as their old shop bustles with the energy of the customers who seek refuge from their particular dilemmas, including a perpetually dieting housewife escaping her husband's betrayal; a starstruck, struggling artist; and a mysterious woman returning after twenty years abroad to search for a long-lost someone.

Behind the chocolate cappuccinos are the stirrings of a revolution that will redefine lives, heal troubled hearts, and rock the very foundation of the humble tea house-and through it all, Penny and Daniel manage to discover what truly matters in life... and in love.

Review: I was in need of some light Sunday-afternoon reading, and this fit the bill perfectly. It's nothing special plot-wise, but good for a cozy afternoon, where you just want to disappear into a book for a couple of hours with no special effort needed.

In style, the book is very similar to a lot of Maeve Binchy's work, although Sharon Owen doesn't possess quite the same charm and freshness as is so typical for Binchy's books. Some of the plot-lines had a bit too much 'tell' and a bit too little 'show', and I therefore felt less sympathetic to those characters than some of the others.

It's obviously not meant as great literature, but as a feel-good novel to while a couple of hours away

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