The Cafe by the Bridge (Chalk Hill #2) in Aussie Readers

Dec 14, 2018 Brenda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-release, own-read, arc, aussie-authors, 5000-books, net-galley, read-on-kindle, contemporary-fiction, romance, rural

Taylor Woods was worried about her younger brother Will after he’d been taken for a ride by a woman who was a sociopath; her skills were creating a relationship then conning the men out of their money. She discovered another young man had been hit by this woman as well – he lived at Chalk Hill and owned the Chalk’n’Cheese café. So Taylor’s goal was to make the trip from Perth to Chalk Hill to find Abe Honeychurch and convince him to help her by getting justice for both himself and Will. That sho ...more

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Feb 25, 2019 Helen rated it it was amazing

I loved the first book in this series, so this one was like settling in back at home with family and friends, it was great seeing Jake, Ella and Sam and then really getting to know Abe and learning what he had been through, and then in bounces the beautiful Taylor, a psychologist who has arrived in Chalk Hill to meet up with Abe to see if he can help her brother. MS Malone has written a beautiful story for her readers, sit back and enjoy.

Abe Honeychurch has come home to Chalk Hill after being ba ...more

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Aug 13, 2020 Bree T rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: romance, rural-lit, australian, series, library-reads, aww2020

This is the second in a trilogy focusing on three brothers finding love in the small Western Australian town of Chalk Hill, where they all grew up. The first brother had always remained within the town but both Abel from this book and also the brother from the third book have spread their wings and moved on. Abel in fact, couldn’t wait to leave. He’d never had an easy relationship with his father and when he got his driver’s license, he left Chalk Hill behind. He made his career as a chef, ownin This is the second in a trilogy focusing on three brothers finding love in the small Western Australian town of Chalk Hill, where they all grew up. The first brother had always remained within the town but both Abel from this book and also the brother from the third book have spread their wings and moved on. Abel in fact, couldn’t wait to leave. He’d never had an easy relationship with his father and when he got his driver’s license, he left Chalk Hill behind. He made his career as a chef, owning a restaurant in Perth but the first book detailed Abel having to sell that restaurant and return to Chalk Hill, where he began converting their grandmother’s house into a cafe. Now the cafe is up and running and there’s a young woman definitely not from Chalk Hill who has been a regular.

Taylor wants to talk to Abel – she thinks that he might be the key to helping her brother. After all, the two of them have something in common. In the first book, the reason for Abel’s returning to Chalk Hill was revealed – he’d fallen in love with a woman who was using him and scamming him, whom he gave money to only to discover that he wasn’t the only person she ‘loved’ or was doing this to. For Abel now, he just wants to forget it ever happened – but Taylor’s questions force him to relive it all. And after what happened to him, Abel has severe trust issues and it’s going to take something (or someone) really special to help him get over that.

I really enjoyed this – it’s builds on the first book but it’s also its own story. Abel has been badly scarred by what happened to him and he’s not in the best of places. He’s a bit bitter and deeply deeply distrustful of people, especially women. This sometimes bleeds into his work and every day life. Taylor is a child psychologist who watched her brother fall prey to the same woman that Abel did and it’s her idea that Abel needs to confront what happened, deal with it and move on, otherwise he’ll be stuck in the same mindframe of being angry and that will mean he will struggle with a lot of things especially forming relationships with people even just in every day life. Her methods are unusual but she ends up really connecting with Abel and there’s quite an attraction that simmers between them.

I liked Taylor and her determination to not only protect her brother but also to sort of encourage him (and also Abel) to try and get back what they are owed, so that the person who wronged them doesn’t continue to get away with it with no consequences whatsoever. Neither Taylor’s brother nor Abel are keen on this idea, for very different reasons and I found this part of the story really interesting. You don’t always think of young men being taken in by love scams – in this case, the woman used their feelings to extract money from them, presumably for necessary things like braces for her young daughter. However that’s not what the money was going on and she also kept them bound to her in other ways or formed elaborate stories to discourage them from seeking restitution once they realised that they had been played. Taylor is like this private detective, going undercover sometimes and trying to find information, dig to get to the bottom of what is really going on in several different ways. She’s older than Abel, she’s in her early thirties and he’s only in his mid twenties I think, and that shows at times. Abel is still reacting like a wounded animal, lashing out a lot. He’s suffering like a stress reaction to what happened and there are still things that trigger a reaction in him, which he needs to learn to deal with. At times Abel felt quite immature, which well, he’s still quite young and things have happened to him that have shaped this mindset I think but during the story he gets some answers to questions he’s probably always had about himself and his life and I think that will definitely give him more peace of mind going forward, help him be more settled in himself.

This was a really nice second instalment and it also helped set up the third book, in the way that the first book gave the reader a bit of a leg up going into this book and now I’m really looking forward to finishing the trilogy. ...more

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Feb 01, 2020 Marg rated it really liked it

Shelves: aww-2020

I have reviewed all three books in the trilogy here

http://www.theintrepidreader.com/2020... ...more

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Dec 15, 2018 Chris marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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