What a lovely sweet book this is. Great characters, a good non-complicated storyline that’s enjoyable to read.

The Little Board Game Café begins with Emily being fired from her job by her fiancé, James, and she then takes the opportunity to open her own café. I felt that there was a lot of time spent on describing the food/cakes/recipes which seemed to me to be a filler. I have only scored this book 3 stars as I could not get into it and therefore did not finish. I am sure it would make a nice holiday read.

Is there any better way to start a review than to say that I thought this book was a total delight from beginning to end? The friendships old and new, everyone pulling together when the chips were down, a heroine I adored, its lovely Yorkshire flavour, the gentle humour… and no, I don’t have any particular love for board games (although this book certainly made me want to explore them rather more…), but is there anyone who doesn’t like a cafe? And the loveliest story about turning your life around, finding love and friendship and everything that makes you happy, so beautifully told… my goodness, it was wonderful. And when I find a book I love this much, I immediately want to share the entire story – but I do promise to rein myself in and try not to spoil it for anyone.

Emily and her mum always had a dream of running a cafe together but… well, that wasn’t to be. Instead, she finds herself working at James Ridley Engineering, engaged to the boss and planning their wedding (when her horrendous mother-in-law allows her to) – until she’s very unexpectedly and embarrassingly made redundant, leaves her fiancé after seeing him through different eyes, and finds herself sleeping in her best friend Kate’s spare room, wondering what to do with her life. Until she spots a “for sale” sign on a run down cafe in an Essendale back street – and decides it’s her big chance to follow her dream. At first things are difficult – although the books looked good, the customers (other than Mr B, for his daily cuppa and a Chorley cake) just don’t come in, and she doesn’t know how she can carry on.

Meanwhile, friend Kate is over the moon to have Emily as her wingman again while she searches in vain for the man of her dreams – and that’s how they find themselves at the local running club, where Emily meets local GP (and board game enthusiast) Ludek. When his board game club has nowhere to hold their meetings, she offers them the use of the cafe – and that leads to the idea of giving it a USP (Kate works in marketing…) and turning it into a board game cafe, with a launch event that hits the papers and the customers start to come through the door. But there are clouds on the horizon – as well as another very popular cafe on the main street, there’s news of a Costa about to open nearby – before Emily finds herself having to face up to the likely end of her dream.

There’s SO much more to the story than that – and one of the things I really loved about it was its wonderfully drawn characters and the friendship and support they provided. Emily’s relationship with the wonderful Mr B was just so lovely – and, rather surprisingly, her ex and his mother came good too. And her friendship with Ludek, slowly building (perhaps…) into something rather more, was just gorgeous, absolutely everything I wanted it to be – but, as you’d expect, with a few obstacles and misunderstandings along the way.

There’s a tremendous warmth about the story’s telling – every single character, no matter how minor, is entirely real and comes to life on the page. Everything is beautifully paced, with the perfect emotional touch – the friendship and romance, but also a really lovely focus on family – and along with the occasional tears and frustration, there’s plenty of gentle humour too, the one-liners that made me laugh out loud, the set pieces that sometimes have you reading through your fingers when things go badly wrong. The Yorkshire setting is just wonderful – we learn early on that Esssendale is the kind of place where you greet people with an “Eyup” even if you don’t know them, and I felt right at home there.

And then there are the board games – as a central theme, that’s quite inspired. You can really feel the passion the different individuals have for their game-playing – and the way Ludek gently cares for his own games speaks volumes about the man himself. And it’s all rather infectious – even I, who’ve only ever played Monopoly and the occasional Trivial Pursuit at Christmas, found myself on Google looking at a few games I’d never heard of before, and really enjoying what I found. And, of course, where there’s a cafe, there’s plenty of delicious food too – some of it less familiar, with a little more googling around pierogi and pączki, but also to find out what Annie’s cakes based on meeples would have looked like!

I really loved this book – but I’m sure you can tell, can’t you? And the fact that it’s the author’s debut takes my breath away – it’s a book she must be immensely proud of, and I can’t wait to see what she does next. One of my books of the year – and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

On of my favourite tropes in novels is where there is a community brought together. I just cannot get enough of it and The Little Board Game Café completely fulfilled my cosy community book desires. I also loved the nostalgic feel from remembering some of the board games, thinking about the ones we still play in our house and discovering a few new ones too.
Emily needs a new start and decides to embark on fulfilling her childhood dream of opening a café. But doesn’t get off to an easy start.
I adore the idea of a board game café. I think all communities need one (or something similar). It’s the one thing that can bring old and young together, help people who may be feeling lonely and it is something that everyone can do.
The café itself is described so vividly and I could easily imagine myself there, devouring the delicious food and soaking up the quaint atmosphere and buzz about the place. I would love to visit it!
The best part about community-based novels for me is the diverse and quirky characters that come with it. I enjoyed all the different personalities in the café and liked them all in their own ways. Their colourful and contrasting personalities were so enjoyable and really brought the café to life.
Then of course there is the gentle, cosy romance aspect too
The Little Board Game Café is such a heartwarming book that is perfect for locking yourself away with.

Emily has always dreamed of having her own little café one day, but childhood tragedy has shaped her into someone who is afraid to take a risk. Her life has not taken the turns she thought it would, but she loves living in the picturesque Yorkshire village of Essendale, and she is happy enough working in a boring office job for her very conventional fiancé Peter... isn't she?

When Peter unexpectedly makes her redundant, Emily is forced to take stock. She begins to realise that she might not be as happy with her life as she thought. Encouraged by her best friend Kate, Emily makes a decision that sets in motion a series of events that find her newly single and homeless, but also about to take on the biggest project of her life - running her own little café off the beaten track in beautiful Essendale.

Emily is totally unprepared for the challenge, and quickly realises that not all is rosy with the business she has taken on, despite putting her all into offering delicious cakes for her tiny group of regulars. She needs to think fast about how she can turn things around, especially given the competition from not just the well-established rival café Sweet Delights, but also the brand new Costa about to open in the high street...

Serendipity offers a helping hand when Emily quite literally falls at the feet of Essendale's very attractive GP Ludek, who happens to be a board game fanatic. She transforms her failing cafe into an entertainment venue, where her customers can enjoy a game with their refreshments, and with a little help from her friends The Little Board Game Café is born. Will the idea bring Emily happiness, or will her hopes and dreams come crashing down?

The Little Board Game Café is a glorious tale of love, friendship, having the courage to follow your dreams... and board games! It follows the story of Emily, as she leaps off the safe path to pursue her childhood ambition to run a welcoming café, but it is also the tale of a young woman learning how to allow herself to be vulnerable in other areas of her life too - especially when it comes to affairs of the heart.

The road to success is a winding one for Emily, and she has to learn to navigate many twists and turns on the professional and personal fronts before she can reach her happy ending. Page weaves a delightful little community around her as she goes on her journey, building on the core of Emily's self-help-book-loving bestie Kate and her grief stricken father, to create a burgeoning Little Board Game Café family full of lovely characters who work their way into your heart. At the same time, Page touches beautifully on issues of loneliness, connection, and second chances that hit all the emotional sweet spots - and of course, there is a delightful 'will-they-won't-they' romance between Emily and Ludek too.

If you are a board game fan, then you will discover a veritable smorgasbord of entertaining delights to tickle your competitive fancy, both old and new, and these pages are filled with mentions of delicious edible fancies to tempt your taste-buds too. Page does not shy away from laying out how trying it is to run a small business, particularly when the threat of corporate giants loom large, but the overwhelming themes are of heart, humour, healing, boundless warmth, and coming together. There are so many funny touches with spot-on comic timing as well - look out for the titles of the books that make their way onto Emily's bedside reading pile for a few giggles!

I did not want this story to end. It is perfect curl up on the sofa, escapist loveliness, that fills your heart with joy.

3.5 stars, rounded up. I don’t think the main character thought through one single decision she made. Her friend Kate was a bit pushy as well. I did love the mention of all of the board games and I wish I had something like the cafe in this book near me. Maybe I’d get out of the house more if I did 😅

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This is a lovely debut book. It is a sweet and cosy read. I loved the characters and reading about the different board games. I like playing board games and I thought that this was a different and interesting theme about cafes.
This is an easygoing and entertaining read. I will definitely read more books by this Author. It would be great if there were more books set in the cafe.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC.

A pitch perfect cozy story, The Little Board Game Cafe will be a winner with a lot of different readers. The setting is beautifully executed, the romance is sweet, and the characters live on the page. The word for this story is charming, and I didn't want it to end.

EXCERPT: Emily thumbed her way through Oxfam's self-help section. What she really needed was How to Stand Up to Your Mother-in-Law, but if such a title existed, the charity shop was out of stock. Instead she looked for books on job-hunting, selecting one title about re-writing your CV and a second entitled Surviving Unemployment. She was wondering if there might be a section on how to cope if it was your own fiancé who'd made you unemployed, when a bright red book with bold white writing caught her eye: A Beginner's Guide to Starting Your Own Business. Perhaps it was a sign.

ABOUT 'THE LITTLE BOARD GAME CAFÉ': When Emily loses her job, house and boyfriend all within a matter of days, she's determined to turn a negative into a positive and follow her dream of running a small cafe in the gorgeous Yorkshire village of Rosegarth.

But she quickly finds she's bitten off more than she can chew when the 'popular' cafe she takes over turns out to secretly be a failing business. Emily desperately needs a way to turn things around, and help comes from the unlikeliest of places when she meets local board game-obsessed GP Ludek. But when a major chain coffee shop opens on the high street, Emily is forced to question if she'll ever be able to compete.

Has she risked everything on something destined to fail? Or can a playful twist, a homely welcome, and a sprinkle of love make Emily's cafe the destination she's always dreamed of?

MY THOUGHTS: A sweet read that attracted me because I love playing board games and doing jigsaws. My Uncle Aubrey used to own a butcher's shop and had a butcher's block set up with a jigsaw on it for customers to do while they were waiting to be served. I loved going in there on my way home from school to put a few pieces in place. So the idea of a board game café really appealed. And I still think it's a brilliant idea.

My problem was with Emily. Her character is an air-head. She has no idea about business. She doesn't do her research on anything. She signed up for a one day cookery course without checking the course content and found herself 'learning' to make basic dishes she already knew how to make. She gets herself into some silly situations and is constantly being bailed out of trouble by various other characters.

I'd like to know when she did her baking for the café - there's no mention of that. She's rolling up to the café at 7.30 am - or even later! - which is opening time. When she does hire someone to help her out with the baking, the employee doesn't start until midday.

I hope that no one decides to go into the café business based on reading this book. More cafés fail than succeed and Emily wouldn't last five minutes in the real world of business.

I would have enjoyed this more had Emily had some backbone, some spunk, some vestige of common sense.

A cute quick read about following your dreams.

⭐⭐⭐.3

#TheLittleBoardGameCafé #NetGalley

I: @jenniferpagewrites @ariesfiction

T: @jenpagewrites @AriesFiction

#contemporaryfiction #chic-lit #romance

THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Page lives near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire with her husband Hermi and his very – no, make that extremely – large collection of board games. Jennifer writes light-hearted, cosy romantic fiction which was initially inspired by her own dating adventures. Before she met Hermi, she was single for 13 years and had pretty much given up on meeting The One.

When she isn’t writing, Jennifer can usually be found playing board games; since she met Hermi, she’s become even more obsessed with them than he is! She also loves cooking (though she’d never claim to be any good at it!), caravan holidays and walking in the beautiful Yorkshire countryside.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Aria & Aries for providing a digital ARC of The Little Board Game Café by Jennifer Page for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

A delightful story of a woman who follows her dream to open a cafe, discovering that she needs something different to get people in the door. A handsome doctor and his invitation to join the board game club gives her inspiration. Some lovely characters, delicious food and a satisfying ending make this a lovely read

What a lovely heartwarming debut read. I really enjoyed it. It follows the story of Emily and her dream of owning a cafe.
The book has a great sense of community. All the characters are likeable, especially Mr.B who was my favourite, he’s such a lovely character.
You’re soon engrossed and rooting for all the characters and their personal growth and happy endings, especially Emily.
A cosy, feel good read. Definitely recommend. Look forward to more from this author.
Thanks to NetGallery and Head Of Zeus for a arc of The Little Board Game Cafe in exchange for a honest review.

This was such a wonderful story, so adorable and very addictive! An amazing debut book, it was filled with charming characters and fascinating happenings too.
I love seeing a character take on a challenge and to try and realise their dreams, so I was totally engrossed with following Emily with her efforts to create a café.
The board game aspect of this story was really fun and I loved how it influenced Emily and gave her something to concentrate on away from her work.
Some great twists and turns, I loved following the characters as they came together to support each other.
A really fantastic feel good story that captured my heart, stimulated my appetite ( such delicious food is mentioned) and made me smile with the lovely community moments that were spread throughout this lovely story.

That was all really fun and cute but I feel the meh parts of this book had to do with the fact the MC is probably the ditziest girl alive. I could see certain things being cute or goofy that a MC does or says but I sometimes felt she was just downright dumb. Doing zero research on buying a closed down establishment is only the start of this. She was a little too aloof for me and didn’t have it in the common sense department.
There were times that I felt this read a little too YA for me and that might also be why I wasn’t too keen.
Although this was cute enough, I don’t think it hit the right spot I was looking for in this book. I do encourage my feel-good bookies out there to give this one a try! And you truly don’t need to know much about board games to understand this one.

What a delightful story by a debut author.
After losing her fiancée and home in quick succession she knows she needs to do something.
Moving in with her friend seems to be the best thing for Emily at the moment.
When a big upset happens in our lives it can sometimes be the change we need and in this case it is.
What seems like a lifetime ago Emily and her mother wanted to open up a little cafe together, unfortunately her mother passed away and Emily threw herself into other endeavors.
Now with change out of her control it seems the perfect time to implement this change she can control, opening a cafe.
Finding one in her price range hasn't been easy but she does it, now to get more foot traffic and fix up the inside without it costing an arm and a leg. With no romantic relationship to hold her back timewise she gives it her all and starts living her dream of baking and running a little cafe all the while looking on YouTube for new coffee drink recipes. And still very few customers.
A man she meets while out running and gets to talking to has an idea to have a game night at her cafe because the venue he uses has been double booked and the game night needs to go.
Will the game night be enough to draw customers into her shop when she adds a few new items to her menu? I adored the idea of a cafe having a game night, it sounds so much fun while drinking delicious specialty coffees. The only thing needed would be to have a few cats lounging around in the cafe. Love and life start picking up. Can it last though at the fast pace it's on? Delightful and a gem. I'll be on the lookout for more by this author.

Pub Date 13 Apr 2023
I was given a complimentary copy of this book.
All opinions expressed are my own.

The Little Board Game Cafe is Jennifer Page’s debut novel and I can’t wait for more. It is about Emily who finally gets the courage to follow her dream after getting fired from her job by her fiancé at the time no less. She also loses her home when she and her fiancé break up. Her dream has a rocky start, but things turn around for her when she comes up with a clever and unique idea to set her cafe apart from others with the help of Ludek and his friends. Will she finally run to love, instead of running away from it? Read The Little Board Game Cafe to find out.
This book is a romance, but it is also so much more than that. It is about having the courage to follow your dreams and your heart, and about the grief process after losing a loved one. I loved this amazing story and highly recommend it to anyone who likes romances.

A cafe with a difference which makes for an interesting read. Well written, relatable characters, which makes this book hard to put down.

The Little Board Game Café is an enchanting tale of love, camaraderie, and the influence of game nights. This delightful read captivated my attention from start to finish with its seamless flow and engaging plot.

Page's writing style is both engaging, making the story easy to follow and understand. Her characters are well-developed and relatable, making it easy to become invested in their lives and struggles.

Overall, The Little Board Game Café is a charming and heartwarming story that will leave readers feeling uplifted and inspired. It is a must-read for anyone who loves games, friendship, and a good dose of positivity.

The Little Board Game Cafe by Jennifer Page

I received an advance review copy for free thanks to Rachel's Random Resources and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Blurb

An irresistible story of love, friendship and the power of Games Night, perfect for fans of Holly Martin and Christie Barlow.

When Emily loses her job, house and boyfriend all within a matter of days, she's determined to turn a negative into a positive and follow her dream of running a small cafe in the gorgeous Yorkshire village of Rosegarth.

But she quickly finds she's bitten off more than she can chew when the 'popular' cafe she takes over turns out to secretly be a failing business. Emily desperately needs a way to turn things around, and help comes from the unlikeliest of places when she meets local board game-obsessed GP Ludek. But when a major chain coffee shop opens on the high street, Emily is forced to question if she'll ever be able to compete.

Has she risked everything on something destined to fail? Or can a playful twist, a homely welcome, and a sprinkle of love make Emily's cafe the destination she's always dreamed of?

My Opinion

Emily has always dreamed of owning her own cafe - she was going to run it alongside her mother. When Emily gets a chance to make her dream come true, is she prepared to take the risk?

In this delight Jennifer Page has summed up how it must feel to be a small cafe when a large coffee chain comes to town - is Emily's cafe able to stand up to the pressure? I adored this book, and I would love to be able to go to my own board game cafe. Nothing is straight forward in this book but that just adds to the charm. A stunning debut novel, with a beautiful front cover.

Rating: 5/5

Do you ever read a book that is the sort of book you want to write and the sort of world you want to live in? The Little Board Game Cafe was exactly that. This was a 100% a me sort of book, it had delicious food descriptions, wonderfully written characters and cozy vibes. Ticked every single box for me.

Emily had it all or so it seems but she loses her job house and boyfriend in one fell swoop but instead of dwelling too much she uses this chance to fulfil a lifelong dream she had with her mother and open a cafe. However, the cafe she has purchased may not have been all it seemed and she quickly needs to turn it around struggling for ideas inspiration does come in the form of an unlikely place.

Agreeing to attend a running club with her best friend sets wheels in motion for meeting the local Gp turned board game fan and ideas start to flow but just when things seem to brightening up, a major coffee chain arrives and once more she is questioning her dream.

I honestly loved this, i loved Emily - she was logical, flawed but also sweet and i was just rooting for her. The cast of characters were all well rounded and had a depth to them that even the fleeting cafe guests left a mark. An all round wonderful 5* read that is perfect for those cozy evenings.

The Little Board Game Cafe is a fun story of a young women finding her own path and building great connections with the people in her life.