The Fortune Café
a novel in three parts
MIS-FORTUNE: Emma, a waitress at The Fortune Café will do anything to avoid opening a fortune cookie. Each fortune is rumored to somehow magically come true. Being a girl grounded in reality, she doesn’t have time for that kind of nonsense. But when trying to prevent a food fight at the café, Emma accidently cracks open a fortune cookie: “Look around, love is trying to catch you.” If there is one thing that Harrison, her former best friend in high school is good at, it’s catching her unaware.
LOVE, NOT LUCK: Lucy has always been lucky . . . until her parents meet her fiancé’s parents at a disastrous lunch at The Fortune Café, and she breaks her lucky jade necklace. Even worse, her fortune cookie reveals that “True love is for the brave, not the lucky.” How is she supposed to read that? She’s always considered it lucky how she met her fiancé. But after breaking her necklace, Lucy’s luck takes a dive. And when her fiancé dumps her, the only person she can turn to is Carter, the unluckiest guy she knows.
TAKEOUT: Stella is content in her new life of taking over her mom’s jewelry shop. No more boyfriend to worry about, and as long as she stays busy, she doesn’t have to dwell on her non-existent love life. When Evan comes into the shop with his young daughter, Stella is charmed. But she is reluctant to complicate her straightforward life, so when she reads her fortune after ordering takeout from The Fortune Café, she completely ignores it. After all, how can a fortune as vague as “Do the thing you fear and love is certain,” apply to her?
My Review
Audience: Adult (Clean)Genre: Romance, Novella Collection
Length: 249 pgs.
Rating: ***** (Loved it!)
Review: Mis-Fortune, the first part of the novel, caught me right away. I love the way that Emma and Harrison fall toward each other. I like how, despite her well-founded personal reservations, Emma can't resist him and so she doesn't. I love the good-guy in Harrison. There were characters I really wanted to punch in the face, but I was involved in a really good way. The second part, Love, Not Luck is just as great. I love the friendship between Lucy and Carter and how it builds so perfectly. I LOVE Lucy's mom. It's SO awesome to see a good, loving, supportive mom (like my mom...she's so super). I love how these two characters fit SO well together. And it's all topped off by the third part, Takeout. This one was all about an amazing first date, and I love that. I love that I got to see how everything led up to this, and then the fall-out of that great date. I wished there'd been time to explore Stella's mom more, because she seemed to amazing and sweet too. I loved watching for the ways these novellas would intersect with each other and finding the small treats of each one left behind in the others. Wonderful.
Content:
Sex - 1/5 (Passionate kissing)
Language - 1/5 (I think there was one swear word...)
Violence - 0/5
Overall rating - PG
Try this. If you like interacting novellas, check out the Ripple Effect Romance series, beginning with HOME MATTERS by Julie N. Ford.
About the Authors
Julie Wright started her first book when she was fifteen. She’s written over a dozen books since then, is a Whitney Award winner, and feels she’s finally getting the hang of this writing gig. She enjoys speaking to writing groups, youth groups, and schools. She loves reading, eating writing, hiking, playing on the beach with her kids, and snuggling with her husband to watch movies. Julie’s favorite thing to do is watch her husband make dinner. She hates mayonnaise, but has a healthy respect for ice cream.
Melanie Bennett Jacobson is an avid reader, amateur cook, and champion shopper. She consumes astonishing amounts of chocolate, chick flicks, and romance novels. After meeting her husband online, she is now living happily married in Southern California with her growing family and a series of doomed houseplants. Melanie is a former English teacher and a sometime blogger who loves to laugh and make others laugh. In her down time (ha!), she writes romantic comedies and pines after beautiful shoes.
Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestselling author. She writes historical thrillers under the pen name H.B. Moore, her latest is Finding Sheba. Under Heather B. Moore she writes romance and women’s fiction. She’s the co-author of The Newport Ladies Book Club series. Other women’s novels include Heart of the Ocean, The Fortune Café, the Aliso Creek Series, and the Amazon bestselling Timeless Romance Anthology Series.
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I REALLY want to read this one. It's coming up on my TBR pile. I'm so glad you loved it.
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