Review: The Espressologist

Book: The Espressologist
Author: Kristina Springer
Pages: 184
Published: October 27th, 2009 by Farrar Straus Giroux
Source: 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?

General Overview: A very cute, quick, light read that will put a smile on your face. I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would, and I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Characters: I'll be honest -- Jane annoyed me at first. She was…perky. Which is maybe something that happens when you work around coffee but really peppy people just bug me. Is it just me, or does it happen to you too? But, I will also be honest in saying that I warmed up to Jane, though it took me a little while. God, I wanted to smack this girl once or twice! Geez! Some of the things that were so obvious and were right in front of her, she didn't notice! Gaahh. Also, the antagonists? Yeah, they weren't so bad to me. Every school has girls like that, and trust me, these girls are not as bad as some of the ones in my school that I've had to deal with.

Plot: This book is very light. It's not serious reading. Therefore, the plot was easy and predictable. I did really like the premise of this book though. Very original! I never would have thought of something like that, and I applaud Kristina Springer for thinking of it. It was such a fun idea! And it was executed pretty well too, in my opinion. The only thing that I hoped for was a bit more depth to the story.

Writing: Kristina Springer sounds like a really happy teenager. I don't mean that in a mean or condescending way -- I said before, really really perky people just annoy me, and since this book is from Jane's POV, she had to sound like a perky person, right (this is where I stop using the word 'perky', it's starting to sound weird in my head…)? But really, this story had the potential to be very stilted and jumpy, and it was not like that at all. It had a definite sense of story and time and a concrete sequence of events, which I really liked. This book could have been awful, but it wasn't. It made me laugh a couple times and smile and go 'aww'.

Cover: This cover is really cute! To be honest, I really looked at it for longer than a second because of the cover. It has coffee on it, okay? Anything with coffee on it sounds (and looks) good to me!

Overall: 3 out of 5 stars