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Laurel Remington's Cake and Confessions is a warm baking story for 10 year olds about a girl who'd much rather make the wedding cake than walk down the aisle in lavender.
Scarlett is The Little Cook, the girl behind the Secret Cooking Club blog. She judges charity bake-offs at local schools and bakes with her friends in the big kitchen next door. On the outside her life looks pretty perfect.
On the inside, she's still shy about any kind of attention. For two years her mom wrote a tell-all blog about every embarrassing detail of her life. You can see why she'd rather hide behind a batch of hot cross buns!
Then Em-K, her mom's boyfriend, sits her down at the kitchen table. He's a very proper politician, and he's nervously asking for her blessing to propose. It's such a sweet scene. Scarlett says yes, but with conditions (starting with no gushy hugs).
Mom says yes too, and then she turns into what Scarlett's friends call the "Momster". There are piles of wedding magazines and colour-coded Post-its. Scarlett offers to make the cake and gets a frosty silence. And a TV show wants to film the wedding and put Scarlett on camera as well. That's her worst nightmare.
It's a lovely mix of funny and a bit sad. Scarlett keeps saying she never thinks about her dad, who left years ago. Then a memory of him making spaghetti Bolognese from scratch pops into her head and makes her cry. It's something lots of kids with a split family will probably recognise.
Her best friend Violet is having a harder time than she lets on. Violet's parents died in a car accident a few years before the story starts. It's mentioned gently, as part of who she is, but it's worth knowing if that's close to home.
And there's the food. Lots of the chapters are named after something to eat, and there are chocolate hot cross buns, sticky toffee pudding and a wedding cake with six different flavours to plan. Don't read it hungry!
It's an American edition, so there's mom, fifth graders and dollars. It's still very British underneath, with the Great British Bake Off and Superdrug.
If they'd happily talk weddings all day, try Rent a Bridesmaid by Jacqueline Wilson. Tilly's best friend gets to be a bridesmaid in a dress the colour of raspberry ripple, and Tilly badly wants a turn.
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