The Best Doggone Bakery

by Ellen Gilman

Overview

Millie Whitfield wants to open a dog bakery in her home town of Houndsville on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but Annabel Larson, a competitor, will try to ruin Millie's chances to succeed. Annabel will resort to any tactic to stop Millie including calling in the health department to stop Millie from reaching her goal.
Getting the bakery open presents many challenges which Millie has to confront head on among them finding the correct recipes to serve the canine customers. After weeks of problems the bakery finally opens and is welcomed by the community.
Millie's penchant for matchmaking is a force to be reckoned with and soon she finds the bakery a hot bed for romance.
Add to that, Millie uses the bakery as a platform to help dogs needing rescue by forming a group of community shopkeepers under her leadership to put on a Gala to raise money for eighty-seven shelties in dire circumstances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781457561887
Publisher:	Dog Ear Publishing
Publication date:	05/09/2018
Pages:	294
Sales rank:	830,420
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Ellen Gilman is the author of Mollie's Tail a true story of Ellen and her family's first rescued Sheltie. Readers of all ages will enjoy this warm and tender tail of an extraordinary dog.
Ellen is a graduate of the University of Maryland and resides in Owings Mills Maryland with her husband, her two shelties and her first rough collie, Max.
You can find her at Starbucks writing her next novel. Please visit her at Facebook or check out her website www.ellengbooks.com

Editorial Reviews

2018-06-25
A young woman decides to open a bakery where humans can sip coffee while their dogs indulge in the specialty of the day.Millie Whitfield is walking her two rescue shelties, Luke and Annie, when she sees that Cristopher's Ice Cream and Cookie Shoppe in Houndsville has suddenly closed and the building is up for sale. It is the perfect location for Millie to fulfill her dream of opening a dog bakery. Now she just needs her husband, Carl, to buy the old farmhouse—plus she must assemble a team to work with her. Fortunately, she has hometown friends to call on. Carolyn will help with management, and MaryEllen (the live-in girlfriend of Millie's older brother, Bradley) will do the baking. Longtime friend Todd fills out the crew. After almost losing the space to the owner of Miss Annabel's Tea and Coffee Emporium, Millie finally opens the bakery. But Annabel Larson continues to try to sabotage the enterprise, including reporting supposed violations to the health department. When Millie is not spending time running the bakery—including throwing a birthday party for Luke, complete with a dog-safe cake—she is busy playing matchmaker for her customers and friends and organizing an emergency fundraising ball to cover medical costs for 87 shelties rescued from a backyard breeder. Stylistically, Gilman's (Mollie's Tail, 2013) prose is casual and too often cutesy—the shops of Houndsville have annoyingly alliterative names (Julie's Jewels; Frannie's Flowers; Bridget's Bookstop), and Millie is always in need of one of Carl's "squishy hugs." Character development is minimal, but with the exception of Annabel, the cast—both human and furry—makes for pleasant company. And it's fun to watch the team devise unique, dog-friendly recipes for biscuits, pupcakes, and muffins. More importantly, the primary message of the breezy narrative—to urge the adoption of rescue dogs—is solidly communicated without sounding too preachy. A clever concept delivered in a quick beach read; plenty of amusing canine antics for those who love dogs and their slightly quirky humans.

Kirkus Reviews