The Gingerbread Bakery

The Dream Harbour series is one I know I can read and all around me disappears for a while. As I turn each page, I get to return to the idyllic New England town filled with quaint stores with perfect names and residents who look like they’ve stepped out of a Hallmark movie.This time we get to focus on Annie and Mac, a couple of Dream Harbour residents who have lingered in the background of the previous four books, and until this book, the animosity between the two has been a subplot throughout the series without any insight or explanation. It feels a little like going back to the beginning with these two characters. Whether it's the reminder of our first encounter of the two in the Pumpkin Spice Cafe and the fact that we’re given not just a  dual POV but a dual timeline too in The. Gingerbread Bakery? I knew this was going to be another tale to whisk me away and give me the answers to what had happened between Annie and Mac to cause such discourse.We’re celebrating Jeannie and Logan’s wedding in this book - and it’s the backdrop for the story of a baker and a man who left it all behind to find out where he belonged only to realise he’d lived there all along. Annie’s always been the reliable one, with a perfect GPA and determination to get exactly what she wanted, Mac on the other hand had done enough to get through school and escape out the other side because there’s a weight of expectation on him from his parents. I liked how we got to see them in the final weeks of schooling, and almost eavesdropped on what brought these two together for a time but also tore them apart. I felt really sorry if I’m honest, for Mac more than Annie drawing this time of their lives. Not only have his parents decided his future but people like Annie only see him as the jock and add on far too many stereotypes about what that means for who he is.  People may not agree with me but I found her younger self very judgmental and I could see why Mac is frustrated with being only seen as one thing to practical strangers (despite knowing each other all their lives).Their journey together for a time and apart for even longer is explained so well. The animosity between the two is tangible and built on miscommunication and an awful lot of assumptions. Understandable as teenagers and early twenty-somethings because we’re often all a little self-centred even if we don’t mean to be at that point in our lives. As we met them again as adults, I again found myself getting frustrated with Annie. She’s already made up her mind and she’s hurt but also is very confrontational with Mac. So much of their later issues and bickering could have ended if they had taken the time to talk to one another, or perhaps those around them.I do love how natural the two are, and they’re a reminder that not everything is simple between people and with the dual timeline, we can fully understand why Annie is protective of her heart and Mac is confused and yet determined to get Annie to just listen to him. They grow from frenemies, to lovers, to frenemies (with a leaning more to the enemies of that term) and forward once again and each stage is from their own actions, or lack of rather than the input of their friends which differs from some of the previous romances in the series. Gilmore gives us their history, but we also get to see the wedding taking shape in the background as it all comes together at the Christmas Tree Farm’s barn. Whilst the world building isn’t vast, there’s enough to know where we are and how things are looking during the season and it’s as beautiful in my mind’s eye as always.Until now,  The Strawberry Patch Pancake House had been my favourite in the series but now I think it’s been usurped by The Gingerbread Bakery because of how it’s written and because we finally know why these two fought so much.