"The Little Board Game Café" by Jennifer Page is a cozy and heartwarming romance novel that revolves around a board game café. The story follows Kate, the owner of the café, as she navigates the challenges of running a business and finding love. When a new competitor threatens to take away her customers, Kate must come up with a plan to keep her café afloat. Along the way, she meets a charming man named Matt who shares her love for board games. As their relationship develops, Kate realizes that there is more to life than just work.

Page's writing is engaging and vivid, transporting the reader to the quaint English town where the story takes place. The characters are well-developed and relatable, making it easy to root for them throughout the story. The theme of community and the importance of finding joy in the simple things in life are woven seamlessly into the plot. Overall, "The Little Board Game Café" is a delightful and entertaining read that will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy inside.

I love books about cafes and so this one would be right up my street. I loved it. The slightly different twist on the trope with the board games was great .I loved both Emily and Ludek but absolutely loved Mr B. The up and downs of the little rundown cafe was great and at times I really did feel for Emily. It was a perfect distraction to the current bad weather and I read it in one sitting with hot tea and biscuits. Perfect

A sweet book about Emily, her lovelife abd fulfilling her dream of starting her own business. It is an easy and quick read which is quite interesting and entertaining. Set in Yorkshire . Reading a lot of thrillers, it is good to occasionally read something less gritty .
Perhaps a little too much obsession with meeting the love of ones life, but mostly a heartwarming story of friendship and a small town.
Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Gorgeous, heart-warming read. Credible characters and situations that resonated.

A beautiful up-lifting story.

Highly recommend.

A brilliant read and one I really enjoyed. The characters are loveable and varied, the plot is one that is engaging and medium paced. I found myself completely drawn into the story and enjoyed the writing style.

Emily fulfills the dream that she and her Mom had of owning a cafe after she loses her job, home and fiancé in quick order. Emily has even more ups and downs owing her cafe….(think no customers) than in her personal life. Only when things get worse and Emily is ready to give up, does she find how much her friends want her to succeed. This sweet board game cafe does indeed turn out to be a sweet book. I received this arc through Netgalley, Publisher Aria and Aries. This review is my opinion.

Emily works for her fiancee. She also lives with her fiancee. When he makes several employees redundant, he includes Emily in the group. She is not amused.

She slowly realizes that she does not feel intensely about him. So, she leaves. She moves in with her best friend, Kate. And she has a brilliant idea.

Emily’s late mother always had a dream. She hoped that she and Emily would one day own their own cafe.

Emily decides to take her inheritance from her mother, and buy a small cafe. She cleans and cleans. She paints and redecorates. She knows she can make her dream come true.

The cafe is on a cul-de-sac, without a lot of foot traffic. There are a few regular customers, but there is not enough income to survive.

Then, she has a brilliant idea. She will redo some things and reopen as The Game Board Cafe.

One of her regular customers is her biggest supporter. Mr B is a Polish man who paints for her, gives her recipes and then shows her how to cook them and generally gives her a great deal of physical and emotional support. He is one of the best characters in the book.

There are many good characters in this book. Emily’s former fiancee is a very nice man. Emily’s best friend is truly a good friend. Emily also finds herself falling for a doctor. He is a game board addict, and a really charming character.

Emily has issues with emotional connections. There were times I was not thrilled with her. She is self involved and it takes quite some time for her to get the message that in life, you must connect to people even if there may be pain along with the joy.

I liked this book and learned about games that were completely unknown to me. I also learned what a meeple is.

I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I am voluntarily writing this review and all opinions are completely my own.

A real fun and entertaining story with some quirky characters.
I really loved the overall story and the theme of not letting the bad rule and taking some positives from them instead.

This was a cute read but it was a little uncomfortable reading about Emily opening a board game cafe when she doesn’t know a thing about board games. She should have had more time to immerse herself in the hobby before running headlong into this business. The romance was lacking but I did like that she stayed friendly with her ex, that’s always nice to read about instead of vile comments about an ex.

This was such a cute, fun, easy read. I loved it!
At some parts, I was very annoyed with the main character because she held back a lot of her trauma and almost missed out on love.
I love how we got to watch the process of how the game board cafe came to be. It was hard work for Emily but it all paid off!
I would really recommend this book!

Emily and her mum always dreamt of owning a cafe. When Emily loses her job, boyfriend and home in quick succession, she's tempted to buy a run-down cafe and fulfil her dream.
This is a sweet book, with a great cast of characters. Somewhat predictable but just what you want from this type of read.
A great holiday book.

A lovely, lovely read. Great cast of well written characters and a real feel good ending. Highly recommended.

The Little Board Game Cafe is one of the only two books that I was able to finish reading for the month of February this year. I was able to finish reading it because it was accessible as I was reading it through my iPad that I would bring to work from time to time.

I got a hold of this book through Netgalley and I grabbed this particular book because I honestly thought the cover was so cute and I found the premise quite interesting. I have always wanted to read cafe stories but never had the chance to do so.

I adore how appetizing the author, Jennifer Page, painted this story through words. The way Emily, our main girl in the story, and her cooking was described were delectable and sweet. The story follows Emily’s self discovery and all the kind and supportive people she meets along the way. It was also a cute story of learning how to express yourself better and getting yourself together and reaching your goals. There were romantic scenes too, that could well be more about friendship and how to navigate through relationships all while building and finding yourself.

There were just moments in the book where I felt like the pacing was getting a bit slow and repetitive. The built up drama with Emily’s ex in the beginning didn’t sit well with me. I ended up not liking him for most of the book but he ended up being a very decent character, like, he was kind to Emily towards the end and I felt sorry for ever not liking him. It was just that they weren’t a match. This is important to mention because I believe his character, for certain parts of the story, stir up a love triangle trope and I thought maybe we could have had more to his character.

I was able to annotate and highlight parts of this book, specially towards the end. I thought there were a lot of really well relatable paragraphs towards the end of the book which makes for such a wonderful conclusion to the story. The author was able to tie up the story well.

Such a sweet feel good story! The characters are all friendly and seem like people you would like to know in your own life. The story did seem to slow a bit in the middle, but overall was such a nice relaxing read.

Emily has to endure the trials and tribulations of a relationship that she is uncertain of, being made redundant and then chooses to go it alone to fulfill her lifelong dream of opening a cafe. Hardwork and good ideas don't guarantee success and Emily finds this out the hard way but the Little Board Game has a lot in store for her throughout the story.

This was a really enjoyable read and I hope there's another book to follow but I do';t know whether there are any plans for this. A recommended read for sure!

This book was very sweet! It tells the story of Emily and her dream of opening a cafe. I really enjoyed getting to know Emily’s small town and see the progress of her business. This was a slower read than I typically read, but the pacing fit the storyline and the setting well. I do like how everything tied up very nicely for our characters and side characters’ storylines finished up just as well as main characters.

This book is exactly the type I love - relationship ends, girl takes on ambitious project (cafe/bookshop/rundown cottage), falls in love, miscommunication briefly ends things, happily ever after.

This time the ambitious project is running a café with no customers, and then turning it into a board games cafes (another thing I love).

The characters are well written to the point of actively disliking a couple - James is pompous and Kate is self absorbed. My issue with Kate is she's Emily's best friend but doesn't support her. She promises to help market the new café but then doesn't actually do anything until it's failing. She spends most of her time with her latest love interest rather than actually supporting her friend - or taking any interest in what's going on until right at the end.

Anyway, the book has a great story, well researched board games (although a handy list of those mentioned in the back would be good so you don't have to go through the book to find them again!), lovely sounding food and a romance worthy of Hallmark.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced ebook copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve not read anything by Jennifer Page before so wasn’t sure what to expect. However, the blurb sounded good & as I frequently judge a book by its cover I was hopeful of a good book. I wasn’t disappointed, it’s a lovely gentle story featuring believable, fully-formed characters and a storyline that held my interest from beginning to end.
I will definitely be looking out for more books by this author.
A lovely feel-good story & a great read for the summer.

I had intended to read just the first two chapters to get a feel for this book and found I could not put it down! I wanted to see Emily create her dream cafe and get some of the success that she so richly deserved. I appreciated that she did struggle initially because it made it more realistic. I liked Emily as a character, but was a little disappointed when she just gave up after she lost the location for her cafe. The supporting characters did exactly what they are supposed to - they supported Emily in realizing her dream and in getting her to take some chances. I found Kate to not always be the best friend to Emily - she never comes to see Emily at the cafe, when she does finally come she is drunk and almost ruins the grand opening, and then she criticizes Emily's dating history (while completely ignoring her own issues in that department). Emily's father needed a good smack upside his head. He also criticizes Emily's relationships with her boyfriend while completing ignoring how his behavior after he lost his wife might have made Emily reluctant to get too close to someone (and ignoring that he was kind of an absentee father and never did anything to support his daughter in person when she really needed him). My only complaint about Ludek was that he gave up on Emily so easily every time they hit a rough patch in their relationship. Overall, this is a really sweet story and perfect for reading with a nice warm drink and a sweet treat.

I really enjoyed this book. Losing everything in a couple day time sucks but emily is determined to have a good life. I love the idea of the board game Cafe. I would definitely recommend this book.