Roxanne is a well-respected magazine fashion director but her new editor Marsha brings in someone to oversee her department. So Roxanne takes a sabbatical to reconsider her career options, heading to a small Yorkshire village where her sister Della runs a bookshop that specialises in cookbooks. There she meets Michael, who has just opened a new bakery – which was his wife’s dream before she ran off with a tradesman.
The second in the Rosemary Lane series, this story focuses more on Roxanne, rather than the bakery, so if someone is picking it up for foodie fiction, they may be a little disappointed. However, I loved that the story focussed on Roxanne’s career and relationship woes and how the forty-something found her feet at a more relaxed pace.
Ellen Berry returns to the village of Burley Bridge for her latest novel, The Little Bakery on Rosemary Lane. The summary says: "Growing up in a quiet Yorkshire village, Roxanne couldn't wait to escape and find her place in the world in London. As a high-powered fashion editor she lives a glamorous life of perennial singlehood - or so it seems to her sister Della. But when Roxanne gets her heart broken by a fashion photographer, she runs away, back to Della's welcoming home above her bookshop in Burley Bridge.
But Burley Bridge, Roxanne discovers, is even quieter than she remembered. There's nothing to do, so Roxanne agrees to walk Della's dog Stanley. It's on these walks that Roxanne makes a startling discovery: the people who live in Burley Bridge are, well, just people - different from the fashion set she's used to, but kind and even interesting. Michael, a widower trying to make a go of a small bakery, particularly so. Little by little, cupcake by cupcake, Roxanne and Michael fall into a comforting friendship.
Could there be a life for Roxanne after all, in the place she's spent 46 years trying to escape?" The Little Bakery on Rosemary Lane - the second in a series that centres around the people who run businesses on Rosemary Lane - is out in September 2017.