Book review and contest: Life's Too Short to Frost a Cupcake

If you've been looking for a fun (and funny), sweet, romantic summer read of the chick lit variety, look no further than Rosie Wilde's novel Life's Too Short to Frost a Cupcake, just out from Orion Books. I devoured it and was sad to see it end but adored it. If you like Sophie Kinsella (author of the Shopaholic series, among others), you'll like this book.

Here's what the protagonist, Alice, goes through when getting ready to make cupcakes for the Cupcake Frosting Competition:

On Monday we had a strategy session, on Tuesday we undertook the drive to Columbus to purchase equipment from Cake Universe, Ohio’s largest retailer of cake and cookie decorating supplies, and tonight we begin testing cupcake recipes. We’re trying three vanilla recipes, two chocolate and a lemon, which is our flirtation with the wild side. I’m mentally exhausted. Yesterday we had ot decide whether Tuesday’s trip to Columbus should be marked on the Cupcake Planner in blue ink for ‘research’ or brown ink for ‘planning’. In the end we just couldn’t decide, so we invented a new yellow category, ‘retail operations.’

As we finished loading up the boot in the car park of Cake Universe, Stephen surveyed our supplies. ‘Sixty disposable icing bags. Twenty bottles of food colouring. And two hundred multicoloured paper cases.’ He lifted his head high, thrust his jaw forward and slammed the boot shut. ‘Let battle commence!’

We will not actually be exhibiting two hundred cupcakes – this number is to allow us what Stephen calls a comfortable margin of error in both baking and frosting.

Here's my review:

Alice Fisher has more than a touch of anxiety, so it seems that she's found the perfect partner in fellow neurotic Stephen, an attorney who insists on splitting every bill right down the middle. Her life in London is safe, cozy, and dead boring, until it's upended when she has to fly to Barnsley, Ohio to woo reclusive alcoholic former music superstar Wyatt Brown into completing his final album for her employer, Carmichael Music.

That's where things start, but not at all where they end. With all the clueless charm of a Sophie Kinsella character (like when she’s caught drinking a glass of wine after she’s supposedly confessed to being an alcoholic, or has to , Alice tries to sort out who's who in small-town Barnsley, a tight-knit, gossipy haven where farming is a way of life. She summons to her mind Dr. Vaizey, who organized a group back home for anxiety sufferers (where she met Stephen) as she tries, for the first time ever, really, to be truly independent. Alice soon finds that she fits perfectly into the town with all its quirky inhabitants, even though she only reluctantly lets herself admit to her feelings for Wyatt. Along the way, she organizers a fundraiser for a cow, helps a 12-year-old with his homework, coaches a teenager to sing “…Baby One More Time” in the Barnsley Idol competition, pretends to be a “baby whisperer,” and escapes the traps set for her by her nemesis Heidi and the clutches of a rather sleazy guy named Gerry.

Yes, you pretty much know what’s going to happen to Alice from the moment you start reading…but she doesn’t, and as she, in all her neurotic charm, figures it out, she wins you over. This is a perfect summer read – especially if you have a cupcake with you to nibble on.

I won't give away the ending, but I will say that the cupcake display Alice creates for the competition sounds amazing. Something that would definitely make your jaw drop if we had a photo of it.

Rosie Wilde's bio reads:

"British born Rosie Wilde now lives in Ohio, where she is perfecting the art of baking cupcakes."

And guess what? We have a copy to give away! Just leave a comment in the comments section of this post with your email address and tell us what your favorite book you've read this summer is (doesn't have to be cupcake related). One entry per person, international entries accepted. Winner will be chosen at random. I like to hear what our readers are up to. Deadline is Monday, August 18th at 5 pm EST, so the winner will have a chance to read it while it's still summer! And look for an interview with Rosie Wilde here soon.

p.s. Aside from this book, one book I read recently and loved is my friend Samara O'Shea's Note to Self: On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits. If you've ever kept a journal (or wanted to), you should check it out. You can even get a cupcake journal to write in!