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CAFE PARADISE: Suzy's last chance at fulfilling a lifelong dream

Carol Balawyder (Goodreads Author)

4.83 · Rating details · 6 ratings · 5 reviews

Most of Suzy Paradise’s dreams died along with her son over twenty years ago.
One thing has re-ignited her passion for living - running her own café, which specializes in home-baked donuts. For Suzy, this is a long-cherished dream come true. Her business is starting to flounder when Donuts-A-Million, a giant chain, opens across the street from her. Her unexpected attractio ...more

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Kindle Edition, 84 pages

Published August 20th 2015 by BalaInc.

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Jun 22, 2021 Pamela rated it it was amazing

I've read a number of Balawyder's "Getting to Mr. Right" books and this one is just as good as the others. Balawyder's books go under the genre of "women's fiction" and perhaps even "chick lit," but it's not a frivolous or even light book. The main character, Suzy, is starting her own business - a bakery - and the challenges of doing so are described well here. As delicious as her doughnuts are, you gotta sell a lot of doughnuts to make a business successful, even if it is a passion and a dream. ...more

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Sep 22, 2015 D.G. Kaye rated it it was amazing

Cafe Paradise is a place filled with delicious doughnuts and pastries, and a dream for Suzy to start over in mid-life. The story evolves around the cafe, and Suzy takes us through her struggles with trying to keep her cafe afloat, while giving us insight into her compassionate nature for those in her circles. Suzy is faced with conflicting decisions about keeping her place going when a competitive doughnut shop opens up across the street, as well as a mysterious friendship she forms with the man ...more

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Feb 07, 2021 Carrie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: indies, womens-fiction

Balawyder's fiction has a way of seamlessly drawing you into her characters' worlds, and before you know it, you can't put the book down until the last page. I devoured this one in two days. It's part of a wonderful women's fiction series where each book gives a glimpse into one of the lives of a group of female friend's. This time it's Suzy's turn, and she's at risk of losing her dream business when a competitor opens across the street. Now she has to reassess what that dream means to her and h ...more

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Dec 10, 2015 Ann Fields rated it really liked it

Dreams are on the line in this women’s fiction novella by accomplished writer, Carol Balawyder.

Café owner, Susie Paradise realized her dream when she opened a bakery and coffee shop. But when a national donut chain opens across the street from her shop, business dives, which threatens to kill her dream and the livelihood of those on her payroll.

Month after month, her financial and business situation worsens, and she is forced to go to the bank to ask for additional capital. Denied, she has no c ...more

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Sep 24, 2015 Kristina Stanley rated it it was amazing

Cafe Paradise is an inspirational story with love and drama. Suzy, the main protagonist, is struggling to keep her business afloat and take care of her friends at the same time. Did she take on too much? You'll have to read Cafe Paradise to find out. The story is told with a sense of humour and wit. You'll get a feel for life in Montreal, for running a small business and for dating after 50. ...more

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About Carol Balawyder

Carol Balawyder

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My dad was born on a farm town in Rama, Saskatchewan and my mom in Montreal. I was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec but currently I live in Montreal. I first came to study Early Childhood Education at McGill. It was a lonely time for me. Away from home for the first time. My parents didn’t believe in summer camps.

I didn’t like teaching kindergarten. All that discipline and yelling and screaming all at o My dad was born on a farm town in Rama, Saskatchewan and my mom in Montreal. I was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec but currently I live in Montreal. I first came to study Early Childhood Education at McGill. It was a lonely time for me. Away from home for the first time. My parents didn’t believe in summer camps.

I didn’t like teaching kindergarten. All that discipline and yelling and screaming all at once…no I had the book first…he hit me…Patty peed in her pants. So I went on to get a B.A. in Education so I could teach high school. My first teaching job was teaching poetry to a group of drop-outs who were no older than I was and even some of the boys in my class were my brother’s friends. It was weird. Teaching High School didn’t turn out to be the be all and end all of saving the world.

After that, I got a neat job teaching English as second language for this company run by a really old woman who let me do practically whatever I wanted. I got to create a lot in those years.

And then I needed to travel. I did some research at The British Museum Library on my own grant. It was on Alice in Wonderland. The real reason why I wanted to do this research was that I just wanted to read from the original Lewis Carroll manuscript. Man, did they ever survey that manuscript. You’d think I was taking out Russian spy material.

Fast forward. I went back to study Applied Linguistics at Concordia University in Montreal where I almost got an M.A. degree if it weren’t for this professor (Gosh I wish I could remember her name…she was ancient) who didn’t think that using music to teach a second language was cool to use with adults. Although, a year later she kind of got with it and delivered a speech at an ESL convention using my material! Really. Now, that’s not fair.

Okay, so bad things happen to good people. I write a few ESL books that sell fairly well. Maybe you’ve heard or even used some of them: Open For Business and Windows on Sci-Tech. These were under my married name Carol Ann Fournier.

So I have my Andy Warhol fifteen minutes of fame and now what?

Oh, I know… I want to write crime novels. But don’t I need some kind of credibility, like maybe having been a criminal myself or a detective (which really, really would have been super cool, if in my good old days they’d accepted women in the police force).

I went back to university to get a M.Sc. in criminology and then ended up teaching Police Technology and Corrections for eighteen years in a college in the north end of Montreal. How’s that for credibility?

In the meantime, I got divorced and found myself side tracking from crime writing and writing about dating. Horror!

Here I am, years later and too many dates to keep track of but with a collection of dating stories and a novel.

Now you know my sad story of how I became a writer. But wait, that’s not all. I’m only beginning. ...more