Book Club - February: Walking Walrus Cafe

The Walking Walrus Cafe is the first book in the Peachland Passions series by Canadian author, Leigh Macfarlane, aka, me. In January, I decided that I would read one of my published books every month of 2025 from the point of view of a reader, and then I would blog about the experience for Book Club. In January, I started with the explosive stand-alone novel, Shuuter's Eye. I chose Walking Walrus Cafe for February mostly because I am currently writing book five in this series. I wanted a refresher on the earlier books anyway, so this was a double win.

Walking Walrus Cafe is the story of three generations of women (Monya, Nina, and Louisa) who run a small-town, waterfront cafe in the real-life Okanagan town of Peachland. This is fourty-something Monya's story.

The first chapter starts inside Monya's cafe, and everything about it feels real. The chapter grabbed me from beginning to end. Monya feels grounded and capable, the family dynamics between her, her daughter, and her granddaughter feel warm and real, and the Walrus resonates like every small town cafe ever. Monya knows the names of her customers, and, like in every small town, she knows their histories and their stories. It's very clear that she is well-liked and well-established in the town. We meet a lot of characters in this first chapter, but they have pretty distinct personalities and are easy to track. Then we meet Brett.

Brett is described as a Paul Newman look alike, and it's revealed he is an art dealer. He's kind to Louisa, makes Monya's system go into unexpected overdrive, and then he is joined by an attractive younger woman with great style. Monya's small private fantasy of being swept away by this man who makes her unexpectedly tingly is dashed, and she laughs to herself at her own foolishness.

I loved the start of the book. Honestly, I ate up the entire first chapter. After that, though, I kept getting interrupted. Family stuff. And since February is a short month, I kept pushing through, anyway. So, I didn't fully get into the next few chapters in the same way. This book has all kinds of good reviews on it, and no one else mentions anything about having a similar experience, so I think it was just me.

The woman who Brett met at the cafe turns out to be his daughter, and he goes on a hike with her boyfriend. While out there, they discover human remains, and it looks like Monya might have known the deceased. Brett shows up at the Walrus before hours hoping for coffee. Because she's kind, she serves him, and they visit a little and start getting to know each other a bit. The tingly feeling continues.

A few chapters later, things are heating up with Brett and Monya, and I'm back in. It turns out, Brett's not the only person Monya has been kind to over the years of running the Walking Walrus. There was Garry, the homeless man she made sure stayed fed, and there are the teenage single mothers that she is teaching to cook in Kelowna. The more Brett learns about her big heart, the more he wants to know. It doesn't hurt that she's easy on the eyes and dabbles as a painter. He takes her to dinner, takes her to an art gallery, and kisses her for the first time in the shadow of a retired stern-wheeler-now-museum. Romance is simmering between the pair, and the book is heating up.

When it's confirmed that the dead man was Garry, Monya decides to try to track down his family. She wants to throw a memorial even if it is bound to have a small turnout, and she wants to invite them. Eventually, she does find them and learns the story of who Garry was and how he ended up on the streets. She gets a chance to bring the family some comfort.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of stuff going on in the lives of other characters living in this town. We learn that Monya's daughter, Nina, got pregnant as a teenager by a boy she had been inseparable from throughout her childhood and adolescence. When he learns he is about to be a father, he runs. She is raising their daughter alone. In this book, Louisa is four, and Nina has no regrets. She does have the occasional pang of jealousy over her best friend's freedom. Cassidy owns the florist shop next to the Walrus, is a bohemian romantic who loves life, and has caught the eye of a rookie police officer in the town. At the start of this book, Cassidy has just returned from a trip, and Nina can't help but notice the differences in their lives. Feeling for her daughter, Monya decides to have a sleepover with Louisa so the girls can go out for an evening.

They take Brett's daughter with them and hit the club. Alicia is a former runway model who now designs clothing. The three women hit it off at a paint night at the Walking Walrus. While they are out at the club, Nina gets drunk. Before the night is over, she bumps into Louisa's father. The start of the next chapter shows her waking up in bed with Colton, and they are both naked -- not something she wants to think about, let alone discuss with her mother.

All of the complications with their adult children and with their careers keep Brett and Monya from simply jumping into bed to enjoy a brief affair while he is in town. This may have been their intention, but life has other plans. They keep getting interrupted. The delayed physical intimacy gives them time to build an emotional connection, rather than just a physical one, so that by the time they finally do make love, the experience is far deeper and stronger than either intended. They fall in love.

Other than the first chapters where I was unable to get into the rhythm of the novel because of my own life, I really loved the pace of this book. I enjoyed the way the characters got to know one another and became invested in what was happening emotionally between them in the story. It felt believable and sweet. It was an enjoyable read.

I also loved the treatment of the subject of homelessness in this book. Homelessness is shown to be a human problem without judgement but also without ignoring both sides of the issue.

Walking Walrus Cafe felt a bit more tame than some romance novels. I mean, there are sex scenes, but there is a lot more build-up and anticipation, and the nerves of a middle-age woman who has not been intimate with a man in a very long time are explored. Monya's journey was that of a mature woman and at the same time had a very youthful quality to it, simply because it had been so long since she had been romanced. So, there are moments when she is sexually sure of herself the way a middle-aged woman would be and other moments where she blushes and feels nerves like she did as a teenager with a crush. Both sides of her are believable and make the love story that much more charming.

When she and Brett do finally make love, it is in a fancy hotel room he has rented and later, they see the town mayor acting indiscreetly with a woman who was not his wife. In some of the reviews, readers felt this storyline was not followed through enough. They wanted to see the mayor get punished, which doesn't happen. The mayor is a jerk, but in this story he doesn't ever really suffer for being that way. Some readers wanted him to pay for his behaviour, but I have to say, I did not experience his character that way. I read him as just another personality in the book, although his personality was not particularly likeable. His infidelity does give Monya leverage over him when needed, so I had no issues with how his character was handled inside the story.

Overall, I really enjoyed Walking Walrus Cafe. I did find that as the first in a series, there was a lot going on in the secondary character's lives. This didn't bother me in that these other people became part of the delayed gratification experienced by Brett and Monya, plus the bits of their stories that were introduced made me want to read more about them in the next books of this series. The only thing I did feel is that if this book hadn't been setting up the next books in the series, it might have moved forward a bit faster. I kind of liked the slower pace, though, and it did feel appropriate for the age of these two main characters. It also felt that although the loose ends were tied up, some of them were alluded to quite early in the story, and so by the time they finally were resolved it took me a second to connect the dots. There were a few, oh yeah, that happened instances. Again, this may just have been my personal distraction at the beginning.

I would definitely recommend Walking Walrus Cafe. It's a little bit sweet, a little bit naughty, with a focus on how important family is as well as the thoughts on homelessness that made it intriguing. If you read it, I'd love to hear who your favourite character was, and also let me know if you were distracted in the first few chapters, too, or if that was just me. Fingers crossed that it was just my own life intruding on my ability to immerse myself in the fictitious one!

Thanks for being part of February book club. In March, we will be reading Sunflowers and Sweet Peas -- the second book in the Peachland Passions series.