Tea & Read: Always the Baker, Never the Bride

Title: Always the Baker, Never the Bride
Author: Sandra D. Bricker
Rating: One cup of tea
I love to bake. It’s the one thing I enjoy doing in the kitchen since cooking frustrates me. But baking…it’s something I can do all day and go to bed with aching feet. Of course, the baker in me was quite excited when I received my copy of Always the Baker and Never the Bride by Sandra D. Bricker. Any book that starts with a recipe for red velvet cupcakes, one of my favorites to bake and eat, has to be great, right? Unfortunately, the book didn’t turn out as great as I expected. It wasn’t bad, but it missed a few ingredients that would have made it wonderful.

Overall, the premise of the book interested me. A woman running a bakery. But the fact that Emma couldn’t eat her creations made the plot a little unbelievable right from the beginning. As a baker, I know it’s integral to be able to taste what you cook, especially when you’re creating specialty cakes like Emma was. I found myself doubting her ability to be as successful as she was without being about to taste what she baked. Another issue was that the author made it clear that Emma couldn’t eat any the cakes. As a person with diabetic family members, I know they can eat more sugar than Emma could. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t have any of her sweets.

Another missing element was actually romance. Emma’s love interest, widower Jackson Drake, is clearly still in love with his dead wife. He was almost too obsessed to with his wife that I had a hard time believing that he could love Emma. And I wanted him to love Emma. Their journey to love was a little unbelievable to me. Like he got over his dead wife overnight after months of mourning her.
But there is one ingredient that I though there was too much of: sermonizing. For some reason, the Jesus references were unrealistic. I am a woman of prayer and I love Jesus with all my heart, but most of the times when characters in the book prayed, it came off unnatural and forced. Again, I wanted them to pray, but some of the situations that motivated them to pray had me skipping pages.

This book had great potential, even to the point that I would read another one of Bricker’s books. But this one not only left me craving sweets, but craving a better ending to the book.