Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan + a Giveaway

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Jenny Colgan's Little Beach Street Bakery.

Down and out doesn't begin to describe Polly's current life situation. After pooling her savings into her boyfriend's business, the company has gone belly up and declared bankruptcy. Gone are the nice car, executive flat, and even the boyfriend. With little cash and no job prospects, Polly has to find a place to live and a place to work, but everything is just out of her budget or too questionable to consider. Until she finds the flat on Mount Polbearne. 

Mount Polbearne is a tidal island, which means that when the tide comes in the town is cut off. The flat itself is in terrible shape, but the calm the sea air and the view provide are enough to win Polly over. Sadly her heat-of-the-moment decision to rent might be the worst choice ever. The tide means she can't get on and off the island for a regular job, plus she's got no car to get off the island with. To quash her growing concerns she begins to bake, bringing down the wrath of the town's only baker - her landlord. 

Oh, this is such a cute book! By the time the town's bakery mob boss begins harassing Polly I was rolling with laughter! Plus, A PUFFIN!

This isn't my first time reading Colgan - she wrote one of the recent Doctor Who titles and a Doctor Who Time Trips novella - but with the exception of the humor, Polly and her story are a far cry from the Gallifreyan Time Lord. I didn't really know what to expect just based on what I had read by her, but I figured it would be good. And it came with blurbs from Jojo Moyes and Sophie Kinsella for crying out loud.

Good doesn't begin to describe it!

Bread moratoriums aside, Polly's tale is packed with great characters and tug at your heartstrings moments. Polly is just plain lovable. She quickly wins over the locals with her tasty treats - a vast improvement over what the bakery is offering - but has to do it on the sly. Everyone keeps saying the bakery owner, Mrs. Manse, has had it tough, but Polly has no idea what they mean until circumstances force the two women together.

Honestly, this book hit all the right notes for me. I've been in the midst of some heavy reading of late, so some lighter fare was definitely on order. I did have to curb some serious bread cravings while reading it, but that's the only negative I can find with Little Beach Street Bakery.

Rating: 5/5

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Jenny Colgan and her work, you can visit her website here. You can also like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.

And now for the giveaway: I have an extra copy of Little Beach Street Bakery to give away to one of you lucky readers! To enter simply fill out the Rafflecopter below before Monday, April 13. US only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Doctor Who Time Trips: The Death Pit by A.L. Kennedy and Into the Nowhere by Jenny T. Colgan

The wait is almost over! That's right, Whovians, the Doctor is set to return in August. (You can see the latest teaser over at io9 here.) Until then, BBC Books has a great new series of e shorts to tide us over!

The series is called Time Slips and launched just this past December with A.L. Kennedy's "The Death Pit."

"The Death Pit" lands Doctor number four in the midst of strange goings on at the Fetch Brothers Golf Spa Hotel where guests have been disappearing for quite some time. Junior Day Receptionist Bryony Mailer has noticed the incidents but honestly believed it could be chalked up to boredom. Until today, that is. Today, the Doctor arrives. 

Rating: 4/4

Since Doctor Four was my first, it's nice to see him back in action here! But it was equally nice to return to Matt Smith's Doctor and Clara as well with Jenny Colgan's installment. (Jenny Colgan also recently penned the Doctor Eleven adventure Dark Horizons.)

In "Into the Nowhere" Doctor Eleven and Clara land on an unmapped and unnamed planet that immediately seems intent on killing them! They can leave if they can only get back to the TARDIS, but nothing intrigues the Doctor quite like the unknown...

These shorts are perfect little tastes to satisfy any Doctor Who fan. Each one is a new little adventure from a great author, and each featuring a different doctor (no particular order to read them in either) - other installments include Nick Harkaway's "Keeping Up With the Joneses" and Cecelia Ahern's "The Bog Warrior" amongst others.

Rating: 4/4

Doctor Who: Dark Horizons by Jenny T. Colgan

Good morning, Whovians! Today I'm a stop on the TLC blog tour for Jenny T. Colgan's Dark Horizons, a new Doctor Who adventure featuring Doctor eleven!

The Doctor is traveling alone and bored. Tired of losing to himself at chess he decides to seek out a possible opponent and ends up traveling to twelfth century Earth, landing on a small island just as a passing Viking ship is being attacked by fire. Yes, fire. The ship in question is transporting their princess and her dowry to her betrothed when they are set upon by a mysterious and raging fire hovering above the water. Freydis is certain it must be the gods saving her from her fate as bride to an unappealing husband. Instead it's the Doctor himself who comes to the rescue. The Vikings are able to take refuge on the nearby island, much to the initial disappointment of the locals who have fallen prey to their new companions' raiding and pillaging in the past. Meanwhile, the Doctor sets about trying to discover the source of the strange attacking fire entity. 

As always, it's fun simply to get a chance at another of the Doctor's adventures. This one comes at a particularly perfect time considering we've still got a few months to go before the 50th anniversary ep, which will sadly mark the end of Matt Smith's reign as the eleventh Doctor.

Colgan does a fantastic job mashing up Vikings and a unique villainous entity for the Doctor to go up against. Dark Horizons is a wonderfully entertaining addition to the Doctor Who universe. As an aside, if I'd not looked her up online I wouldn't have known that Colgan is a prolific writer with a string of novels to her name and nary a sci-fi one in sight. Not that it matters: a writer is a writer and a Who fan is a Who fan. Jenny Colgan is a great writer and a huge Doctor Who fan and it shows in Dark Horizons. She's set to write another Doctor Who tale for 2014 as part of the upcoming e book series Time Trips.

To see more stops on the tour, check out the TLC tour page here. A quick search will lead you to Jenny Colgan's author page and Twitter feed, but she's created a Facebook page specifically for her Whovian matters, which you can like here.