Nate never imagined renting out the old corner café would mean sharing it with a werewolf—let alone the smallest, shyest one he’d ever met. Toby is nervous, soft-spoken, and prone to baking cupcakes whenever stress strikes. He even talks to his sourdough starter like it’s a pet.
Opening a bakery that welcomes both humans and shifters is Toby’s dream, but while his baking is impeccable, his business sense is nonexistent. Talking to customers leaves him pink-cheeked and stammering, and the paperwork piles up faster than his bread dough rises.
That’s where Nate steps in. He tells himself it’s just professional—helping a tenant find his feet. But then there’s the way Toby smells like cinnamon sugar, the way his wolf ears twitch when Nate compliments his scones, and the way he licks frosting from his thumb without realizing what it does to Nate’s pulse.
Between recipe disasters, midnight kitchen cleanups, and the occasional full-moon mishap, Nate starts to wonder if he’s in over his head. Because when it comes to Toby, he might want far more than just a taste.
A very quick read but too many things were glossed over for me. Take the food critic, for example, where’s the scene with them? Toby was stressed over the critic coming, so much that he stress baked a tasting menu enough to feed an army, yet we don’t even get a scene with the critic. We hear about how well they rated the bakery later in passing, but that was it. Later, when Toby’s parents pop up unannounced to visit him, his dad clearly doesn’t like Nate, and a brunch date for the following morning is set up in order for both parents to get to know him. Again, that’s skipped and we jump straight to weeks later with Toby moving in with Nate. It’s just far too short and rushed with so many moments brushed over. For me, this felt more like an outline with too much happening off page. Cozy with sweet characters, yes, but sadly, just so much lost potential.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
The werewolf lore in this book is slightly different than what is in every other book in this series because everyone knows shifters exist; there is prejudice against them but not in the community where this story takes place. By shifters, I mean that there are more shifters other than the wolves (who are again called werewolves like they were in the first two books), as there is a brief mention of the existence of fox and feline shifters. Other than the fact that everyone knows shifters exist, the werewolf lore in this book is similar to that used in the other books in the series in that werewolves can shift at will, both partially and fully, and will also at least partially shift during times of heightened emotions; however, as was the case in book 1, werewolves can resist fully shifting during the full moon, but they have to fight the instinct, so they might partially shift almost involuntarily. Toby, our werewolf MC, like Milo from book 3, always bottoms for his human mate Nate and is never even slightly dominant with his mate even when effected by shifting energy during the full moon, which means that we don't see him partially shift during sex like the werewolf MCs do in the first two books of the series. However, on several occasions, we see Toby partially shift involuntarily primarily due to his anxiety, and interestingly enough, we also see a scene where he fully shifted during his sleep because the full moon was getting closer. Anyhow, this story was pretty cute because Toby was an adorable werewolf character, and I liked seeing him become more confident and less anxious over time.
This one was good for a quick read—not near as captivating for me as Swipe Right on the Alpha (same author). There wasn’t much smut, and what was there felt a bit too summarized for my taste. That said, Toby was an adorable character! I was totally enchanted by the shy little werewolf and rooting for his bakery dream (& romance with Nate) the whole time. A quick, light read with a sweet vibe.