Review ~ How to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie by Gina Henning.

Title: How to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie.
Author: Gina Henning.
Publisher: Carina UK.
Genre: Contemporary Romance.
Publication Date: November 7, 2014.
Source: Netgalley.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Purchase: Amazon UK

A warm pie. A tasty guy. Happy Thanksgiving indeed.

Lauren Hauser is home for the holidays, and she’s been given a challenge: preparing her grandmother’s pecan pie. The problem? Lauren’s not famed for her baking skills. In fact, while her sister would win Star Baker every week, and her mom at least knows a sieve from a spatula, Lauren’s bakes have always been more dangerous than delicious!

Still, no Thanksgiving would be complete without dessert…which is why Lauren finds herself searching for pecans on Thanksgiving Eve. Stumbling into a gorgeous stranger laden down with bags of pecans seems like a holiday miracle…but despite Jack’s kissable lips he’s frostier than a snow cone…and out of sight before she can say ‘Macy’s Parade’!

As the clock counts down to Thanksgiving dinner, Lauren is running out of time. And without her grandmother’s perfect pecan pie it won’t be a very Happy Thanksgiving!

What Lauren needs is a knight in shining armour. And it might just be that the magic of Thanksgiving will find her one after all…

Before I review the book itself, I have to say that Carina have outdone themselves yet again with another gorgeous cover. The cover for How to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie is cute and fun and perfectly represents the actual book Gina Henning has written. How to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie is a Thanksgiving romance and it’s an entertaining, sweet novella to read during the holiday season. Nothing is taken too seriously, it’s a light-hearted outlook on Lauren Hauser, who disastrous in the kitchen, has been given her grandmother’s special pecan pie recipe to make for Thanksgiving. Setting off to buy the right pecans for the pie, under her grandmother’s warning that the wrong ones will ruin Thanksgiving, Lauren is not expecting to stumble into a little holiday romance along the way and the pressure is on to bake the perfect pecan pie and get to know this handsome stranger, with or without her family’s interfering presence.

I found How to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie a little slow to get going and it took me a bit of time to warm to Lauren. At the beginning she seemed very over-dramatic and a bit disastrous, which at first I found a little irritating. I also felt it seemed a bit unrealistic how someone who apparently doesn’t do hook-ups didn’t seem to have any issues getting into Jack’s car and then going to spend the rest of the day baking with him when all she knew about him was that he was the seemingly moody and off-hand stranger she met a little rudely in the store. Having said that, I did grow to like both characters and really enjoyed the build-up of the chemistry between them and the little moments they shared. It was a sweet romance and I was interested to see how it would work out given that the story was only set over a couple of days. What I loved the most about the novella was Lauren’s family who were very amusing and so eager for Lauren to meet someone. They just felt like the typical family – with the bickering and the teasing and the little bit of interfering – and the family outlook gave a really warm and endearing feel to this novella.

Though the story was a little predictable, it was a still a worthwhile fun-filled read. I loved the humour and all the mad antics Lauren and her family got up to and it felt like the kind of hectic build up to Thanksgiving I would expect. How to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie is simply a cute little holiday romance read and there were definitely enough mentions of food to have this Brit craving Thanksgiving dinner. The characters could be quite comical and I thought the relationships between the family members were quite easy to relate to. I always enjoy a book which can represent what I consider the realistic kind of family and How to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie did that. I loved the ending and this is the kind of ideal, cosy read to escape into and put a little smile on your face for an hour or two. I’m looking forward to seeing what Gina brings us with the next book in the series, How to Bake the Perfect Christmas Cake.




Review also posted on Goodreads | Amazon UK