Ella’s Ice Cream Summer by Sue Watson
ARC Received from Netgalley for a fair review.
Publish Date: May 11, 2017
“Was there still time to do something more with my life and get that Facebook fantasy? Should I Just play it safe and not risk losing what little I had, or should I throw caution to the wind and embrace what apparently the universe had given me? Perhaps this was my adventure after all?”
Ella’s Ice Cream Summer was a light story about a pseudo-empty-nester turning over a new leaf in her life. Ella lost her job, her kids are off having adventures in Nepal and Thailand for the summer, and her mother has taken on internet dating all other sorts of social media. The death of her aunt leaves Ella with a portion of the family ice cream business which Ella decides to try out for the summer.
The simplicity of the story was also what brought my opinion down. The beginning had enough going on to get me intrigued, but once Ella was working the ice cream stand I was hardly hooked and had to push through the story. The only element that really kept me going was the curiosity of what had caused the family feud. The actually facts behind the feud was definitely not expected but definitely gave reason as to why there was such a problem. The entire time, we are put off thinking it might be something completely trivial that had three women to have a complete fall out.
The curiosity wasn’t enough. The romantic relationship that Ella developed with Ben is not very developed either as their interactions are short. More time was spent theoretically thinking about what Ella was doing with the future of the business/staying in Devon and how she shouldn’t get attached to Ben than actual time spent with him.
The best part of the book was sadly the descriptions of the ice cream treats. And though it’s called Ice Cream Summer, it’s probably more like gelato. But I honestly don’t have enough knowledge between the differences of the two to definitely say either way. I just love ice cream/gelato.
What I had hoped would be a kick start to my summer beach reads ended up only inspiring me to make my own gelato, which it turns out is harder than this book makes it out to be, there are quite a few steps! I did find it cute to find an easy recipe after the epilogue for a batch of vanilla ice cream.
Now that I have read two books on gelato/ice cream this month I have since decided to take on making some of my own. Post on that after I try a little bit.
