Thursday 11 August 2016

The Little Flower Shop by the Sea – by Ali McNamara

Original Cover
My own copy














The blurb:

Poppy Carmichael, 30, certainly never intended to own a florist. But when she inherits her grandmother's beloved flower shop on the beautiful Cornish coast, Poppy has no choice but to return to the pretty harbour town of St Felix where she spent much of her childhood.

Returning to St Felix brings back sad memories for Poppy. But when she makes new friends such as local flower grower Jake, a young widowed father of two teenagers, Poppy begins to overcome her fears, and discover for herself what's so special about this little flower shop by the sea.

My Opinion:

This book was waiting in my bookshelf for over a year, so it was about time. I love Ali McNamara’s books, so I was really excited to start this.

The story follows Poppy Carmichael, who comes back to St. Felix after 15 years, she’s inherited her grandmother’s flower shop. It’s hard for Poppy to come back, because of what happened in the past and on top of it all?! She doesn’t even like flowers. Her mother sends help in form of Amber, who works in their flower shop in New York. And then there is also Jake, the local flower grower. He is there to help her from the start and they start spending a lot of time together.

Jake is a young widowed father of two teenagers, Bronte and Charlie. Bronte and Charlie remind Poppy of herself and her brother when they were younger. Jake went through a lot in the past, so in certain ways he has difficulties to move on. Oh and I think he’s just fab: so caring, sweet, good looking, funny and much more, hello new book boyfriend ;).

I really adored the scenes between the two of them, because there were so many sparks. It wasn’t so easy though, both had these things from the past and some other things came in between as well. I don’t want to say more here, but when I was reading it I was hoping for something to happen between all the time. Let’s just say the storyline surprised me here, in a good way though.

St. Felix and the community there are amazing. All the characters are full of heart and passion and they are really there for each other. The location is wonderful as well and Ali managed to create this wonderful atmosphere around the characters and add a gripping storyline as well. I was hooked from the start and didn’t want to leave the story.

I like looking at flowers, but I barley know anything about them. I still really liked all the flowery descriptions and also the subtitles in the chapters. They all had a logic and sense behind them and it actually added some charm to the story.

There are a lot of feelings and emotions involved in this story with Jake being a widower and Poppy’s past. The way we got introduced to it all and slowly read about what happened was lovely. Ali captured the feelings of the characters beautifully. Yes, it’s all very emotional, touching and sad, but in the end it’s part of their lives and it makes them who they are now, ready to start something new.

I really love how all the characters got their story told as well and it was never too much, always a great mixture with Poppy’s and Jake’s story in the middle.

The Little Flower Shop by the Sea is fantastic on so many levels! A wonderful setting, an amazing mixture of characters, an intriguing storyline and much more. Ali just always manages to put a smile on my face.

Rating:




My possible cast:

Poppy: Meghan Ory
















Jake: Gabriel Macht



Ali on Twitter: @AliMcNamara
Website: http://www.alimcnamara.co.uk
Goodreads - Amazon UK - Amazon US

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