My Review: The Cafe at the End of the World by @helen_jcomerford was a cosy hug of a book with a side order of supernatural peril. Lydie loves nothing more than working in her family’s cafe, The Snug, where she knows and loves the regulars and serves delicious hot chocolate and baked goods. One day a strange boy enters her cafe and changes everything. He’s on a mission to find the owner of a horse he has seen in the road outside. The horse is her father’s, and her father is Death (now retired). 

It’s a fun, romantic, and intriguing book. As a reader you know that you’re in safe hands. Nothing that horrible will happen and you can relax into a deeply satisfying story told well filled with characters that you genuinely care about.

Early on in the book a character states that  ‘we always become our parents in the end’. Whether or not this is true is the main theme of the book. Can we choose who to become or is it inevitable that we grow into adults like our parents? What if your Dad was Death? Or Pandemic for that matter? It’s a coming of age story that wrestles with this question but it’s also about the power of altruistic kindness and service, community and inter -generational  relationships. 

Don’t read it without access to hot chocolate, tea  & baked goods or your stomach will be grumbling at the descriptions of The Snug’s tasty treats! 

Suggested For: teens who enjoy quirky romances with more sugar than spice

If You Like This You Might Enjoy: Captain of Fates by Katherine Webber, The Between-Worlds B&B by Amy Mae-Baxter, The Wycherley’s by Annaliese, Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianne Wynne Jones

Blurb: THE END IS BREWING…

Love, lattes, and world-ending drama – life just got a lot less cosy for Lydie, teenage daughter of Death. The YA romcom/fantasy obsession you didn’t know you needed.

Come for the cinnamon rolls, stay for the apocalypse.

Lydie, the daughter of Death, a retired Rider of the Apocalypse, is obsessed with ‘cosy’; cosy books, cosy job in the family café, cosy low-drama life.

But then secretive, attractive, and above all annoying, Kai, bursts into the café in a flurry of autumn leaves, with secrets that threaten to change everything.

Big, un-cosy things are coming for Lydie whether she likes it or not, and working with Kai might be the only way to protect her town. Provided she doesn’t fall for him first …

Thanks to Bloomsbury for the review copy via Netflix.