August 27, 2012

Review: The Espressologist by Kristina Springer

The Espressologist

Author: Kristina Springer
Publisher: Square Fish
Publication Date: January 4, 2011 (Paperback)
Pages: 208
Source: Paperback/Library

What’s your drink of choice? Is it a small pumpkin spice latte? Then you’re lots of fun and a bit sassy. Or a medium americano? You prefer simplicity in life. Or perhaps it’s a small decaf soy sugar-free hazelnut caffe latte? Some might call you a yuppie. Seventeen-year-old barista Jane Turner has this theory that you can tell a lot about a person by their regular coffee drink. She scribbles it all down in a notebook and calls it Espressology. So it’s not a totally crazy idea when Jane starts hooking up some of her friends based on their coffee orders. Like her best friend, Em, a medium hot chocolate, and Cam, a toffee nut latte. But when her boss, Derek, gets wind of Jane’s Espressology, he makes it an in-store holiday promotion, promising customers their perfect matches for the price of their favorite coffee. Things are going better than Derek could ever have hoped, so why is Jane so freaked out? Does it have anything to do with Em dating Cam? She’s the one who set them up! She should be happy for them, right? With overtones of Jane Austen’s Emma and brimming with humor and heart, this sweet, frothy debut will be savored by readers.

Review: This was such a cute little contemporary! It was such a short, fast and fun read! I never would have come up with an idea like matching people based on their coffee drinks. It was so creative and just really fun to read about. The first thing I liked was how each type of drink had their own little blurb in Jane's book about what the people who like to order it are like. It was so interesting, especially since there was so many different drinks and just as many different blurbs about those types of people. It was so cool. I personally would never be able to think of blurbs like those. And this whole Espressologist promotion they did at her coffee shop. While it might have been really stressful, it also sounded pretty fun, and a awesome fun way to boost sales during the holidays. What surprised me though was that most of these Espressology matches worked out. Though you could see right from the beginning that Cam and Em's wasn't gonna work. It was totally obvious how Cam was really into Jane and that he only took Em out to make Jane happy. I was really happy that Cam and Jane got together in the end since it was painfully obvious how much they liked each other. What was really cool though, was at the end of the book there was recipes for some of the coffee drinks mentioned! 

I do feel like there could have been more to the story, like outside the coffee shop. And I do feel like the characters could have been developed more. But overall, for the short length of this book, it was a great fun and fast read! Definitely worth the small amount of time it takes to to read it!

Fair warning! This book will really have you craving coffee by the end of it!

4 Stars!