Café Chaos My Family Is Not a Piece of Cake

With a pink cover and cartoon illustrations that will be appealing to many readers, this is a fun story about being part of a family that runs the Café Crumble, named after Gran’s prizewinning dessert.   Hope and her friend Leila are starting secondary school, along with snidey Skyla, who had made a habit of calling Hope ‘embarrassing’.  Secondary school is very different from the small pond of primary school, though, and Hope is surprised to find more acceptance than she had been used to.

Home life is chaotic – she lives above the café with her parents: Dad the Chef, Mum the Manager, Grandma Margery a wonderful baker, and her older cousin Connor, who is studying Business, and likes to show off his knowledge, not always helpfully. When Connor’s Mum, (Mum’s sister) Rita appears, wanting to move in temporarily, Hope is forced to share her bedroom, and this is definitely problematic: she has to endure meditation gongs, perfumed air, and conversations about auras.  The café is running into financial difficulties, and the extended family come up with ideas to help, some with unintended and hilarious consequences.  When Skyla finds another cunning angle for getting at Hope, Mum is too busy to listen, but Leila helps her to find a way to stand up to the bully, and of course all is well, with the family and the café, by the end of the story.

This was fun to read, with credible characters and a good plot, about a family whose members have problems and are not always getting on, but muddle through because they love each other- it’s a very positive story.