Christmas Reads #1 - The Parisian Christmas Bake Off by Jenny Oliver

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off By Jenny Oliver Publication Date: 23rd October 2013, 139 pages Publisher: Carina Genre: Christmas, Romance, Chick-Lit Format: e-Book Source: Bought
Amazon UK / Amazon US

Welcome to the most celebrated patisserie competition in Paris – ready, steady, bake!
Watching snowflakes settle on the Eiffel Tower, Rachel Smithson’s cosy English village feels very far way – as, thankfully, does her commitment-phobic ex, probably already kissing someone else under the mistletoe.  But Rachel hasn’t come to Paris to mope she’s come to bake. Hard.Because the search for Paris’s next patisserie apprentice is about to begin!  And super-chef judge Henri Salernes is an infamously tough cookie. But Rachel isn’t about to let her confidence (or pastry) crumble. She’s got one week, mounds of melt-in-the-mouth macaroons and towers of perfect profiteroles to prove that she really is a star baker.
As well as clouds of flour, and wafts of chocolate and cinnamon, there’s definitely a touch of Christmas magic in the air… Rachel hasn’t come to Paris looking for a fairy-tale romance, but the city of love might gift-wrap her one anyway…
Not even a dusting of icing sugar could make The Parisian Christmas Bake-Off a more perfect Christmas treat!

The first thing that draw me to The Parisian Christmas Bake-Off was the front cover with its Christmas theme I fell in love with it and then again once I read the blurb. Rachel works in a school teaching children but she dreams of baking to her hearts content. Growing up with her mother who owned a bakery put becoming a baker in her blood but Rachel doesn't know if she has it in her anymore.  Even though Rachel may not have the confidence in herself, her friends, colleagues and family know that she could be the next best thing, so when they pull together to get her to Paris for a baking competition, she can't help feel its now or never and  gets on the plane that could change her life completely. Arriving in Paris it isn't anything like Rachel imagined at all, from the extreme rivalry and the world class chef who can't seemed to have a good word for her, Rachel wonders if she is cut out for this at all. Though she is willing to try her very best and make her mother proud as well as to make it the whole week and win that crown of Apprentice to a well known chef.  Having her own bakery is something she has wanted, ever since her mother's closed and with her passing, Rachel has wanted to open her own in the small town that she lives, the same town where her mother's bakery was, years ago. Now all she needs is the drive, the confidence and the will to make it through this week and then decide on her future but things don't always go to plan, so when she meets a charming man, who works on the next floor up from the bakery in Paris, there is a instant connection between them. But he is not telling her something, something that could bring their flirtation to a dramatic conclusion and Rachel back at square one again with her love life. The Parisian Christmas Bake-Off is wonderful Christmas book that everyone should read! With its holiday cheer, delicious baking, humour and friendship, it will take you on a journey of finding your dreams and the lengths you will go to get them, even at Christmas. There also maybe romance as well but you would have to read this amazing book to find out! If I had to sum this book up in three words, they would be Magical, Dreamy and Parisian. 

Another day, another book,