Bake Believe by Cori Cooper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is the last day of summer vacation and Cat Anderson is determined to enjoy every minute, she wakes up early and plans out her day in her head, go to the pool, use hair lightener, sunbathe, try a new snack, meet cute boys and swap phone numbers as well as the other things a fourteen year old girl can want. She creeps out of bed to the living room to get her phone from the living room to text her best friend and see if she is up and ready for the day yet, she is super excited and cannot wait any longer to ask her parents if she can go to the pool, the only snag in her plan. She goes to wake her parents up; and ask to go to the pool and she is not above begging this time, she really really wants to go, she eventually convinces them to do it, but with some conditions attached, to which she agrees and flies out of the room to get ready and throw some frozen waffles into the toaster and cover them in butter and syrup, but her mum is in the kitchen and just staring at the fridge, which is not normal, especially when she says she wants to bake something, Cat’s mum never bakes!

After she has eaten her waffles and her cousin Robyn has arrived in a burst of smiles and sunshine and announces that he mum has been baking all morning and that she has asked Robyn and cat to deliver them to the neighbours later on, all this talk of baking is making Cat’s mum on edge again, so she decides that this would be a good time for them to leave and head to the pool, but Robyn isn’t going to let it go and demands that they find out, as she is trying to figure it out, she remembers that it is more than strange that Cat’s mum is thinking about baking when she never even cooks anything, she only just manages to use her microwave and order takeout, but Cat is having none of it and eventually manages to change the subject to boys and distracts her.

When the girls get to the pool and realise that it is empty, they begin to regret their decision to go as early as possible, but they pick their spots and decide to do a bit of a sunbathing while they wait for their friends, this is after they have a race to the diving board, which Robyn wins as usual and to get down, Robyn dives and Cat cannonballs. When Cat surfaces, she is shocked to see that someone has arrived, Liam, they have a laugh and a joke about Cat’s dive, that is until she sees a gorgeous boy beside Robyn and she becomes speechless at the sight of him. Eventually she manages to get her words out to talk to him and finds out that if she doesn’t look at his eyes, she can actually talk to him, but that is easier said than done when all she wants to do is look at him. When Robyn and Liam go to get snacks, she is left with Tobey and continues their conversation, but agrees to go with him to join them shortly after, however, what Liam is eating puts her off food for a while, so she goes to top up her tan.

When Cat is woken up, she is embarrassed to know that she fell asleep, never mind that it was for a couple of hours, so after confirming that nobody had seen her snore or drool, agrees to go and join in the pool games with their friends for the next couple of hours. After she gets out, she sees someone eating a pretzel and sudden;y cannot get the idea out of her head that she has to try one of those bagels and after Tobey finds out where they are from, they go to get one from a newly opened bakery down the road from the pool, it is the most delicious thing she has ever eaten and unbeknownst to Cat, this pretzel is about to change her life.

When Cat gets home, she realises that the tv dinner she is eating is not appetising in the slightest and that she cannot eat it, so she asks to go to Robin’s house and the same thing happens the next morning at breakfast, her mum is also acting really strangely still. When she gets to school, she goes to her last class of the day and finds that there is no class, she goes to see the guidance counsellor and find out what happened, but has to wait until the next day to change it, her only choice now is to go to Culinary class, this is where things start to get strange.

Why has everything been turned upside down by that pretzel and why did what happened at school actually happen and what is going on with her mum? Cat has no idea what she has gotten herself into and what the consequences of this will be, but is it all tru, or is it all bake believe, the only way to figure out what happens is to read on and discover the secrets at the same time as Cat, with a few enticing recipes thrown in for good measure on the way.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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