Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Lily Chen to HJ!
Hi Lily (pen name for Tania Tay) and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Matcha Maker Café!
Hi, Welcome Matcha Lover
Please summarize the book for the readers here:
Sasha Lee opens her dream café in idyllic countryside town, Bramleigh Green, serving up delicious matcha drinks and baked goods. She has inherited psychic matchmaking powers from her Malaysian Chinese grandmother and has a sideline in match-making the townsfolk. However she’s been burnt by a previous relationship, and thinks love is for other people, not herself. When ex- finance guy, Ben, walks into the café, she attempts to match make him, ignoring her growing attraction for him. But it’s difficult for her to see a match for him, and she’s worried about her professional reputation. Meanwhile her café is in trouble and she can’t afford the new lease. Will she manage to find happiness, or will she have to leave her dream behind?
Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:
Beauty is in the imperfections. A life lived, broken and made whole again.
Please share a few Fun facts about this book…
- Like Sasha I’ve always wanted to set up a cafe, and in Matcha Moments I amalgamated some cafés I’ve loved to hang out in over the years. I love looking at art and photography displayed in cafés such as Freuds in London. I adore mis-matching vintage tea cups and saucers as used in one of my favourite writing cafés, (now sadly closed) All You Read Is Love in Leytonstone, East London. I used to have Sunday brunch in a café-bar in Holland Village, Singapore that had the velvet upholstered rocking chair sofas that inspired the sofas in the cosy courtyard. The hexagonal patchwork cushions were based on cushions my real Chinese grandmother made in her village in Malaysia.
- I’ve been a keen baker since I was five. For a while I was a professional cake decorator, making novelty cakes such as fairy tale castles, dragons and even a Louis Vuitton handbag. It’s been fun to experiment with using matcha as an ingredient. Some of the goodies I baked at The Matcha Maker Café book launch included matcha cupcakes, decorated with mini books and sugar roses, matcha blondies and matcha and white chocolate chip cookies. We also added matcha syrup to prosecco, which ended up looking a bit like pond water but tasted pretty delish!
What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?
Ben is a quiet soul, new in town, and he loves the fact that Sasha draws people around her. She’s created a wonderful warm community in the café and makes people happy by helping them find love.
Sasha is intrigued by Ben who is fleeing corporate finance and learning how to make ceramics – they enjoy some good conversations and share a favourite film – the classic Casablanca … it definitely helps that he is super hot!
Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?
I loved coming up with the meet-cute for Sasha and Ben. Sasha is up on a ladder watering her newly planted hanging baskets when Ben, who is new to the café, walks underneath and gets drenched. I’ve included as the longer excerpt below.
It did make me laugh as when I ran it by my husband to see if he thought it was ok. He replied: “I thought this was meant to be fiction?”. I do love my houseplants and while watering my hanging baskets at home have often ended up in drenching him by mistake. Every time I read it now it makes me laugh as I think of my husband, wet and grouching at me….
Readers should read this book….
If you’re feeling burnt out by life and what’s going on in the world, and you’re in need of an easy-to-read, cosy romance with a cast of quirky, warm-hearted characters who support each other. It’s perfect summer holiday reading – but don’t forget to line up plenty of snacks… people have told me reading this book makes them hungry.
What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?
I’m currently writing the next book in the Matcha Maker series. It’s not yet officially announced so I can’t tell you the title or what it’s about. But there’s lots of the same characters and if you enjoy Sasha and Ben’s story I hope you’ll enjoy the next one too.
Thanks for blogging at HJ!
Giveaway: A copy of THE MATCHA MAKER CAFÉ by Lily Chen
To enter Giveaway, please share this post on your Socials and Leave a comment below to this Q: Do you think a matchmaker should be allowed to date a client?
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Excerpt from The Matcha Maker Café:
From Chapter 3
Since Sasha had taken over the run-down tea shop and turned it into Matcha Moments, she’d found that her days had a regular rhythm. Monday to Friday, she opened at nine o’clock. Commuters and day-trippers would grab a drink on their walk to the train station and the school-run mums and dads would gather after they’d dropped their children at the local primary school.
There was usually half an hour or so before the lunchtime rush, when Sasha could catch her breath and carry on with odd jobs around the café. She plumped up a few cushions on the corner sofa and straightened the journals and papers in the magazine rack.
That morning, the Book Clubbers were meeting. They had just been served with their tea and cakes and were settling in for a long discussion. ‘I know exactly how that character felt. All that pent-up longing! The frustration!’ Mollie exclaimed, sliding a glance at Paloma, who worked in the local pharmacy and had slipped into the café for an hour’s break.
Mollie often escaped her office, preferring to work in the café. The background sounds helped her think, she said. They were both staunch supporters of Sasha’s matchmaking service. A matcha reading had guided Mollie to start thinking of warm-hearted Paloma romantically, just a couple of months ago. Sasha smiled. She might have given up on love for her¬self, but it made her melt with joy when she saw her clients happily in love.
Sasha’s eye caught on a box of plants from the garden centre. The bulbs were already sprouting and she was keen to get them into the hanging baskets outside the front door. Hyacinths, narcissus and primulas would provide a much-needed burst of colour, heralding warmer days to come. She pictured the spring blooms welcoming the café’s customers with their gorgeous perfume.
She glanced at her watch. There was just enough time before lunchtime customers started to arrive. She grabbed the tray of plants and a bag of compost, filled a watering can and found her trowel. At an outside table, she arranged the plants in the coconut coir baskets, filling them with the rich, dark compost mixed with local manure. She hummed happily as she worked; despite the sharp nip in the air, the fragrance from the budding hyacinths was already lifting her spirits.
Once she’d finished, Sasha fetched the stepladder from the shed in the backyard. She hung the newly planted baskets from two iron hooks either side of the door and picked up the water¬ing can. Might as well give them a good water.
From the stepladder, she admired the view as she watered. It never ceased to amaze her that she now lived and ran her own business in this picture-perfect town. The café had a prime spot, on the corner of the high street, facing the green. The medieval church spire of St Bram’s rose above the trees from one end, and the town hall with its clock tower from the other.
To the east, if she leaned forward, she could just make out the humpbacked bridge over a babbling stream, a tributary of the River Leigh. There’d been frost that morning, and it looked like someone had sifted icing sugar over the scene. Just stunning.
‘ARGHH!’ came a gruff shout, waking her from her reverie. ‘Fuck’s sake! What the HELL?’
Alarmed, Sasha looked down. A pair of brown eyes con¬fronted her, snapping with anger. Heavy eyebrows were knotted in a frown. Water had drained through the soil and the coconut coir, drenching the man. A shock of wet hair was plastered over his forehead, dotted with clumps of what was probably manure.
‘Fuck – oops – sorry!’ Sasha controlled her swearing and stopped watering. She froze, not sure whether to go up or down the ladder.
‘I’m bloody soaked!’ the man growled. She didn’t add that he stank of the compost too.
‘Er . . . so sorry. Didn’t you see me watering?’ Sasha waved the watering can and more water sloshed out, landing on the man’s sharp – and rather attractive – cheekbones.
‘Arghh! Why would I walk under it if I’d seen you?’
‘Whoops!’ She clapped a hand to her mouth but couldn’t stop a snort escaping. She wasn’t laughing at the guy, though he did look kind of funny. It was more a nervous giggle.
He was not impressed. He raked back his hair with one hand and it stuck up like a Mohican. ‘Yeah, thanks. Hilarious. Glad I’ve cheered you up. Do you always laugh at your customers?’
‘No, of course not!’ Sasha’s face flamed. ‘I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean to laugh – at least – not at you – it’s – just – nerves.’ She was totally flustered.
‘I’m fucking drenched!’
‘Come inside and I’ll get you a towel and a hot drink?’ She edged slowly down the stepladder, as if approaching an enraged animal.
‘Do I have a choice?’ he grumbled.
Back on the ground, the man, who looked to be in his thirties, loomed over her. Despite his annoyance, he didn’t look violent, just wet. Sasha picked up the ladder. ‘Let me make it up to you!’ She turned towards the door just as he stepped forward, catching his foot with the end of the ladder. ‘Oops! Sorry – so sorry again!’
The guy’s face twisted in pain as he fell forwards. She felt large warm hands land on her back, and caught a whiff of mint toothpaste, sandalwood aftershave and a hint of woodsmoke. He steadied himself, swearing under his breath, then he wrenched his hands away, as if she had a virus and there was no way he was catching it.
She held the door open for him, trying her best not to hit him with the ladder again.
‘Anyone ever tell you you’re a walking hazard?’ he grouched at her.
She grinned apologetically. ‘A towel and a cup of mat
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Book Info:
he only person harder to match than her clients . . . is the matchmaker herself.
The Matcha Maker Café is a sweet, small-town slow-burn romance set in a charming matcha cafe, perfect for readers who love Laurie Gilmore, B.K. Borison and the gentle magic of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
At Matcha Moments, owner Sasha Lee is a star matchmaker, helping customers find love over a smooth cup of matcha. You’d think that as the master she’d be living her fairytale ending, but Sasha is allergic to commitment.
With a growing reputation, her successes are challenged when the ‘unmatchable’ Ben walks in – a man who believes he’s too boring for love. As Sasha tries to match him, she slowly finds herself drawn to his quiet charm.
As their daily banter becomes the highlight of her day, Sasha must confront the possibility that her own love story might be brewing. Will she embrace the unexpected romance, or let her past fears keep her from true love?
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Meet the Author:
Tania Tay writing under the pseudonym Lily Chen. Tania’s dream has always been to run a café. She loves baking and feeding sweet treats to her family and friends. As well as being an author, she is a professional cake decorator.
Tania has a lifelong obsession with stories and storytelling. As a child she read all night, with a torch under the covers. She wrote stories and plays on her mum’s old typewriter in the school holidays. After studying for a degree in History of Art, her career was in advertising, as a copywriter. One day at a job interview, she was asked if she was a “brave writer” which made her join a short story class at the City Lit, with Leone Ross where she wrote a few weird dark tales. Her writing explores female friendship, and the relationship between mothers and daughters. Occasionally there’s a supernatural twist. Tania’s debut novel The Other Woman was published in 2024. She also writes children’s books and developed a screenplay with BBC Writersroom. Tania is second generation, British Malaysian Chinese, and lives with her family in East London.
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