Double Scoop is the eight book in the ‘With A Kick’ series. ‘With A Kick’ is the name of an ice cream shop in London that serves specialty alcoholic ice cream. The books in the series all have something to do with the shop in some way and the two men who run the shop, Patrick and Lee. The story is told in third person through Patrick’s eyes.


Patrick is the owner and manager of ‘With A Kick,’ and Lee has been at his side since its opening. In fact it was Lee who pushed Patrick into opening the shop. Lee is maybe fifteen years younger but that doesn’t stop him from lusting after Patrick. However, that does stop Patrick from making a move on Lee. Because of Lee’s age, Patrick also tends to treat him as a kid, and he’s not. This irritates Lee to no end. Lee is enthusiastic, out-going, friendly and hot. Patrick thinks Lee would never want an old guy like him. Patrick is insecure, tends towards pessimism, and finds it difficult to accept help from others.

When disaster strikes the shop Patrick thinks his livelihood is destroyed even though Lee is optimistic that the shop can be restored. With the help of all their friends and other shopkeepers, With A Kick is restored better than ever. I liked this part of the story, seeing everyone work together and how they went about doing it.

I didn’t read the whole series, only the first two books and I stopped. The reason was because the storyline felt rushed and incomplete in both books. The writing didn’t feel smooth, just quickly jotted down to get the ideas written and to put out a book. I decided to read this story because I wanted to find out about the owners of the ice cream shop. They weren’t shown often in the other stories, but Patrick and Lee seemed interesting.

This story felt more smoothly written, but at the same time it was quite repetitive. A tremendous amount of time was spent with Patrick and Lee having misunderstandings one after the other. Supposedly they worked so well together in the shop they could finish each other’s thoughts and know what the other needed. But in order to advance their relationship, they sucked. They’d take one step forward and ten steps back. Patrick would go around and around in his head how Lee couldn’t possibly want someone as old as he was and that he’d most likely misunderstood Lee’s intentions. Neither came out and spoke exactly what they wanted until almost the end. I think this type of plot idea, using miscommunication, was way overdone because it got to the point of annoyance. The book could have been shortened by at least a quarter instead of dragging those scenes out to make the book longer.

I had high hopes when I bought this book and I did like the smoother writing and the secondary characters. But I disliked the repetitive misunderstandings between Patrick and Lee, it grew tedious and I often found myself putting the book aside because of it. I was left oddly dissatisfied at the end. Maybe that was due to my expectations for something more interesting to happen between the couple. The actual interesting part was what was happening in the background with the shop and other people.

This is a fast read. I wouldn’t call it fluffy, but there’s no real angst other than the manufactured misunderstandings. There are many readers who enjoyed Double Scoop, but I can only give it 3 Stars.


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Finally these two get their heads out of their arses. With a little help from their friends. It's really cute. ( )

Finally these two get their heads out of their arses. With a little help from their friends. It's really cute. ( )