Kristina Forest

But she would make drop cookies and pies and everything from scratch.

My grandmother, she really was like a kind of grandmother from a storybook.

And we would come home from school and

And she would have cookies and my friends would always want to come over and be like, did your grandma bake?

You know, like she would make lemonade fresh.

Like she really was like, she's just an amazing woman.

And the three of us, me, my mom and my grandmother had this joke that we would one day start selling those pound cakes.

And so when I was thinking about what the Smith family would be known for, what their legacy would be, I thought, oh,

pound cakes.

It starts with his grandfather making a pound cake for his wife.

And then from there, he's like, well, what else can I bake?

And so that was inspired by my own relationship with my mom and my grandma and how much we all love to bake and all the secret recipes that we have.

Oh, thank you.

Yes.

So Noelle, at the beginning of the novel, she works at a place called Hidden Gems Books.

And particularly, it's a used bookstore, hence the name Hidden Gems.

And her boss,

Harold is lovingly curmudgeonly, but he's very strict on, we only sell used books.

And I believe that's what he says is people need to read about what came before, before they read new things.

And even though Noel's like, we need to sell new books in order to keep people wanting to come to the store.