This is officially my favourite of the Coffee Shop Romances... even though both the title and cover suggest that it's not my sort of book. The cover implies Christmas clichés (not my favourite) and since I don't belong to the culture of coffee drinkers, either, "holiday blend" was a meaningless phrase to me.

I love Eleanor. She's the sort of person who talks about books and movies, and has tea parties, and struggles with anxiety, and has Skype dates and blogging friends who live in different places, and feels a strong attachment to her hometown. Definitely a character I can relate to! (Except for the part about tea parties. Not enough tea parties in my life.)

I enjoyed all the quotes and the references, and the general camaraderie in the coffee shop. I like the way Holiday Blend captures Eleanor's world: not just working in the coffee shop, but the general atmosphere of her university-college-place as the end of semester and Christmas approach, as well as Eleanor's feelings about her hometown. And I like that the romance, which involves the reappearance of her high school crush, is as much about trust and friendship as it is about romance.

“Do you still yearn for those seasonal haiku-writing parties you used to talk about?”
Eleanor stuffed another bite of gingerbread in her mouth. Good God, she had just poured out her soul to him, hadn’t she? (And he remembered! Which might not mean anything. In fact, it almost certainly didn’t mean anything. He could quote every line from The Princess Bride; his memory for stupid things was freakishly good.) ( )