Book Review: Baking Me Crazy by Karla Sorensen

Baking Me Crazy 

by Karla Sorensen

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"Friends to lovers at its best-- a sweet indulgence I couldn’t put down!” - R.S. Grey, USA Today Bestselling Author

Baking Me Crazy, the first in the romantic comedy Donner Bakery Series of standalones, from Karla Sorensen is available now!

I'm Levi Buchanan, and until five years ago, I thought the legend of my family's curse was a load of crazy, Southern nonsense.

No curse can make you fall in love at first sight. No curse can force a true, deep, passionate, all-consuming love that will haunt you all the days of your life.

Then I met Jocelyn Abernathy and I realized how completely wrong I was.

The problem is, Jocelyn guards her feelings like well-armed soldier. She's the most beautiful, stubborn, infuriating woman I've ever met. Every time she talks, I want to kiss the living daylights out of her. But I can't.

Because when we met, she didn't need true love. She needed a best friend. And that's what I've been to her... for five years.

But when Jocelyn meets a handsome stranger her first day working at Donner Bakery and she lets him buy her a dill pickle cupcake, I realize with ominous regret that I may have missed my window with my best friend.

If I can't get her to see past our friendship, my new curse may be to watch the love of my life move on with someone else.

'Baking Me Crazy' is a full-length contemporary romantic comedy, can be read as a standalone, and is book#1 in the Donner Bakery series, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Joy's face morphed. Gone was the sweet, ebullient young woman who'd been my co-worker for the past couple of hours. Gone was the happiest person in the world. In her place was determined, scheming Joy. She narrowed her eyes, and I actually sat back in my chair from the force of it.

"There's a wild dog sitting outside." Her voice was shaky, but her eyes were unflinching. The skin around them was wrinkled and translucent, spotted with age. "Oh, that's my dog.”… "He looks scary." I smiled at her. "He's very sweet, I promise." "What's his name?" "Nero," I answered. She glanced over her glasses at me. "After the Roman emperor who burned people alive?"


Joy can't figure out how I learned so many swear words during my young life, and I had to try to explain how spending my impressionable teen years with the Buchanans gave me the vocabulary of a drunken pirate.


For as different as I felt on the inside, it was strange that it didn't reflect anywhere else. Shouldn't there be a sign above my head? Beware of the twenty-one-year-old virgin with repressed sexual feelings. Explosion imminent. Touch with extreme caution. May spontaneously combust with prolonged eye contact and cupcake purchasing and/or casual swimming sessions.

My Review:

I will confess to a complete lack of awareness of Karla Sorensen’s genius before picking up this delightful book, but as she was Penny Reid’s pick to blaze the trail and be the first rattle out of the box to kick off her new Smartypants Romance, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe, well, that was all I needed to know. And I wholeheartedly concur with the mastermind’s brilliant choice. Ms. Sorensen has produced an excellent lead-in for a new series and her contribution fit seamlessly into the oddly alluring and ever-appealing microcosm of Green Valley.


Written in my favorite dual POV, the storylines were relevant, engaging, and absorbing. The main character of Joss spent much of her time in a wheelchair and I was quite taken with the care, thoughtful observation, and sensitivity used in enlightening the reader of the impact her medical and mobility issues had on her social-emotional development and the energy and concentration required to complete even the most simple of tasks of day-to-day life that ambulatory bipeds take for granted.


Ms. Sorensen’s humor was well-honed and witty, her characters were endearing and assessable, and to my gleeful amusement, their captivating tale effortlessly rolled through my gray matter with an even balance of emotional tone, with heart-squeezes and giggle-snorts aplenty. I was besotted with sweet Levi and adored how he perceived and cataloged Joss in vivid Technicolor in his inner musings. Levi current reigns as King, occupying the top spot on my list of BBFs. Does it even need saying that Karla Sorensen has a new fangirl? 

About Karla Sorensen

Karla Sorensen has been an avid reader her entire life, preferring stories with a happily-ever-after over just about any other kind. And considering she has an entire line item in her budget for books, she realized it might just be cheaper to write her own stories. It doesn’t take much to keep her happy…a book, a really big glass of wine, and at least thirty minutes of complete silence every day. She still keeps her toes in the world of health care marketing, where she made her living pre-babies. Now she stays home, writing and mommy-ing full time (this translates to almost every day being a ‘pajama day’ at the Sorensen household…don’t judge). She lives in West Michigan with her husband, two exceptionally adorable sons and big, shaggy rescue dog.

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Website: http://www.karlasorensen.com/

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