Pupcakes

A Christmas Novel

De: Annie England Noblin

Narrado por: Amy McFadden

Sit! Stay! Speak! author Annie England Noblin's novel takes one woman starting over, adds an aging pug named Teddy Roosevelt, and proves the power of a well-baked dog treat.

All she wants is a settled-down life.

What she gets is a dog - and a whole new normal....

There he stood in the doorway: overweight, depressed, and nearly homeless - a pug named Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was Brydie Benson's latest problem, arriving on top of her messy divorce and sudden move. Brydie needed a place to start over, so this rent-free home seemed a great idea. She just never counted on Teddy or his owner, the Germantown Retirement Village's toughest customer, Pauline Neumann.

And because rent-free doesn't mean bills-free, Brydie gets a night-shift job at a big-box grocery. Whoever guessed there were so many people who wanted baked goods after midnight?

Then she gets an idea - why not combine her baking skills with her newfound dog knowledge? And so her store, Pupcakes, is born. Along with a new start comes a possible new love in the form of Nathan Reid, a local doctor with a sassy Irish wolfhound named Sasha. And as fall turns to winter and then to Christmas, Brydie begins to realize that life is a little bit like learning a new recipe for puff pastry - it takes a few tries to get it just right!

©2017 Annie England Noblin (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

Adorably repetitive

Overall, this story is charming as all get out. It’s not at all a Christmas novel, though. Maybe the last 15 mins have to do with Christmas. Despite that, it’s a quaint story of a woman and her pug.

Amy McFadden has such a strange way of reading, it’s distracting at times. Her consonants are so hard at the ends of her words it makes hearing her Ts and Ps feel like slaps in the face after a while. She also sounds as times like she wants to be doing anything else but reading this book. Her downward inflections frequently betray the fairly upbeat sentences in Noblin’s story.

As for the writing, it’s predictable but not overly so. If I took a shot of alcohol every time Annie wrote “Bridie let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding” or “Bridie bit her bottom lip” I’d be dead by now. Many details are repeated or extraneous and it occasionally slows down the story.

Sweet Romance

Touching story that takes place during the holidays, although they have very little to do with the story line. Animal lovers will especially enjoy this book. I'm not familiar with this author but after reading Pupcakes, I'm anxious to read more of her work.

Happy and upbeat story. A nice listen.

The relationships developed in the story were wonderful. They crossed generations, races and special needs. Very enjoyable.

Great Holiday Story/TERRIBLE Narration

Narrator is whiny, overdramatic and mispronounces a lot of words. The story was great, but I could hardly stand to hear her!

A Hallmark Christmas movie in book form

It’s a predictable but fun enough story, but I could not stand listening to the audio version, sadly. While I’m sure the narrator is a fine fit for other stories, I just couldn’t get behind her very heavy accent (not surprised to learn she’s from Michigan!), since the protagonist is supposed be from Arkansas- it would’ve been better to choose a narrator with a southern accent or no accent. I also got very annoyed at all the sentences ending in an upward inflection, making it sound like she was stopping mid-sentence/thought. It got so distracting I had to stop listening and just read it instead.