She’s finally gone out on her own to open Monica’s Café, but she’s struggling to keep the doors open and the money flowing. Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada and Viking for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review. Each character has their own imperfections and they are each relatable in their own way, no matter the age difference. However, it’s either for family and friends, or, with the exception of celebs, shared relatively anonymously.

Through these very different characters we get to know them all better as well as this group of people all starting to become friends.Slowly, all these strangers become connected, and the reader realizes that authenticity is more complicated than it seems. In addition to telling her secrets and leaving the notebook for someone else to find, she sets out to try and make a difference in Julian’s life.

JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. The plot is indeed partly predictable, but “good” predictable, and (*spoilers alert*) even though I knew from the very beginning that Monica and Hazard were supposed to be together, I was still rooting for them the whole time and enjoyed their careful realisation of their feelings. And one person’s disapproval of a character who is accidentally outed is quickly is overcome by a scene that could be from Mickey Mouse!I won a free copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway but was under no obligation to post a review. It is an easy read and rather predictable but no worse for that if you just fancy something light but good.

Hazard is an interesting character in that he’s a really obnoxious on the one hand, but has the self-awareness to take himself off on a retreat to Thailand to detox. We collaborate with authors across all adult fiction genres, and also handle children’s books, young adult and cross-over fiction. I understand the desire for escapism, but for me, it has to be either more believable than this, or be explicitly fantasy or magical realism.We didn't know the Admiral, he just happened to have an impressive horizontal slab of black marble over his last resting place, which made a great table for drinks. Leaving the notebook on a table in his friendly neighbourhood café, Julian never expects Monica, the owner, to track him down after finding it. As she walked briskly past the graves of the fallen soldiers and the White Russian ŽmigrŽs, she could sense the sheltering wildlife--the gray squirrels, urban foxes, and the jet-black ravens--guarding the graves like the souls of the dead. And eventually some of the people who have written in the notebook get a chance to meet, and you'll just have to read the book to find out what happens next. In fact all the characters bring something wonderful to this story that I dreaded getting nearer to the end as I was enjoying their company so much.