A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow – Laura Taylor Namey (DNF review)

Title: A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow.

Author: Laura Taylor Namey.

Format: Audiobook.

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Page count: 320.

Release day: November 10^th 2020.

Genre: YA, Romance.

Rating: DNF @35%

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

Love & Gelato meets Don’t Date Rosa Santos in this charming, heartfelt story following a Miami girl who unexpectedly finds love—and herself—in a small English town.

For Lila Reyes, a summer in England was never part of the plan. The plan was 1) take over her abuela’s role as head baker at their panadería, 2) move in with her best friend after graduation, and 3) live happily ever after with her boyfriend. But then the Trifecta happened, and everything—including Lila herself—fell apart.

Worried about Lila’s mental health, her parents make a new plan for her: Spend three months with family friends in Winchester, England, to relax and reset. But with the lack of sun, a grumpy inn cook, and a small town lacking Miami flavor (both in food and otherwise), what would be a dream trip for some feels more like a nightmare to Lila…until she meets Orion Maxwell.

A teashop clerk with troubles of his own, Orion is determined to help Lila out of her funk, and appoints himself as her personal tour guide. From Winchester’s drama-filled music scene to the sweeping English countryside, it isn’t long before Lila is not only charmed by Orion, but England itself. Soon a new future is beginning to form in Lila’s mind—one that would mean leaving everything she ever planned behind.

My thoughts:

I´m quite sad about this DNF.. But I just did not want to force myself through a book I was not enjoying..

Tbh I did not really know what this book was about when I started, I just knew it was a YA contemporary, and I was quite in the mood for one. My main reason for picking this one, was the title, I mean isn´t it great?!

Right at the start of the book Lila arrives in England for a three month stay with family friends, which she is really not excited about! We also soon learn that she really is into cooking/baking! And I love contemporaries that contain baking, so this made me really excited!

So I was really enjoying the first 15% or something of this book. But then the main character started to annoy me, so much that I decided to quit listening to this book..

She was just a bit too full of herself for my liking. She is apparently very good at baking, and she knows it, and she will let us not as well. And often.. And it is not only her who will tell us, she is getting a lot of praise for it, but it just became a bit much..

She also really likes to run, which is nice, but at that she is also good. At some point she goes for a run with the love interest. And I think the scene was 15 minutes on audio, and we god told 3 times that she was really holding back/ running slower because of him. And I just didn’t get why it was so important for us to know this.

After this there was another scene that annoyed me, btu I think that was mainly because I already was disliking Lila, and my head just started to focus on all the other things I didn’t like..

I know I now have only talked about the main character, but me not liking her dominated the plot. Which was good for how far I got!

What a negative review.. I’m sorry.. I was just ready to love this book, and I just didn’t..

Have you read this book? What did you think?