Review: Clever, Entertaining & Well-crafted!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 18, 2012
The Coffee Shop is an intriguing paranormal romance book and like nothing I have ever read before: no weres, vamps, or things that go bump in the night! The concept is so very clever; it was most definitely a read that I just had to get to the end as quickly as possible.The two characters, Derrick and Annie, are highly likeable characters. It was refreshing to follow the male protagonist in particular and to be able to emphasise with his feelings, his passion and to understand his psyche. There were many moments of well-crafted dialogue and excellent humour and banter between these characters that were highly amusing and entertaining.On the flip side, however, this novel is heavily laced with dialogue and has very little narrative voice. This was not a negative, yet it took some time to get used to. There were times that the volume of dialogue became a little confusing to follow, yet it didn't take long for me to catch up and work out what was going on. Whilst I'm not a big fan of heavy dialogue, Lauren Hunter's writing was meticulous. She crafted and structured a complicated narrative structure very impressively. If this had been attempted by a less skilled writer, I would have truly been lost considering the leaps in time and dream. Lauren, however, handles it all very well without losing the pace and meaning.Recommended to contemporary romance, paranormal romance and twist lovers alike. Rating: 3.5 happy fairies, upgrading to 4 for Amazon/Goodreads.