45 pages • 1 hour read
Laurie GilmoreThe Pumpkin Spice Café
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 27-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 27 Summary
Jeanie is in the shower when Logan wakes up the next morning, but as he contemplates confessing his love for her, he stumbles upon the papers the realtor left Jeanie on her table. Logan panics, jumping to the conclusion that Jeanie will sell the café, leave Dream Harbor, and all his worst fears about their relationship will come true. When Jeanie emerges from the shower, an argument ensues. Even though she assures him she’s not going to sell the café, Logan insists they slow things down with their relationship before leaving.
Chapter 28 Summary
Jeanie feels terrible after Logan leaves, especially because he’s insinuated that she doesn’t belong in Dream Harbor. The following day, she finds Norman tampering with the café’s thermostat, and he quits before she can accuse him of any other crimes. Norman admits to the vandalism once Jeanie asks what she can do to make him stay. He reveals that he wanted to buy the café but Dot had said Jeanie needed it more. Norman says he’d hoped to scare Jeanie off by making it too difficult for her to manage the constantly problems of the café. Norman acknowledges he’s gone too far and offers to pay for any damages, but he still quits. Nevertheless, Jeanie gets back to work, knowing she can’t quit on the café or her new life despite Logan’s fears that she will do just that.
Chapter 29 Summary
Hazel and Annie ambush Logan to ask him what he did to Jeanie, whom they have seen working more often at the café since Norman quit. Logan feels confused as to why Norman quit and left Jeanie in the lurch, yet he remains firm that he made the right decision, still certain that Jeanie will leave. Hazel literally slaps some sense into Logan to show him how wrong he is and how he’s letting his fear of abandonment dictate his choices and ruin his relationship with Jeanie. As they leave, Logan finally sees that he and his fear are the root of the conflict between himself and Jeanie. He knows it’s time to let that fear go.
Chapter 30 Summary
Jeanie finally starts to feel she has a handle on the café when Logan bursts through the doors, demanding to see her. Jeanie is in her office, and Logan threatens to say what he needs to say to her in front of everyone in the café if she doesn’t come out. Surprised, Jeanie lets him into her office. Logan apologizes for how he acted and what he said. Jeanie admits that she is not sure who she is right now and is still figuring things out about her life. Logan says he wants her just the way she is, though he knows he needs to work through his fears and trust issues. He admits he is in love with her, and Jeanie does the same before Logan carries her out into the café and proclaims his love for everyone in town to hear.
Chapter 31 Summary
Jeanie and Logan return to his apartment where they have sex and Logan finds he’s able to picture Jeanie staying there with him forever. They talk about telling Dot about Norman, and Jeanie agrees to tell her when she comes back from her vacation.
Chapter 32 Summary
Annie and Hazel come to the café that night to talk about Logan’s earlier romantic gesture, and end up discussing Hazel’s prospects with Noah and Annie’s feelings for Mac. A few days later, Aunt Dot storms back into the café, asking where Norman is. Dot is impressed with what Jeanie has done with the café and asks her if she is happy, which Jeanie confirms. Dot had told Norman to meet her at the café so she could settle things with him, a sentiment Logan echoes when he arrives. When Norman enters the café, Jeanie can see his love for Dot and believes she sees the same feelings in her aunt as well. When Norman rehashes what he did, Jeanie says she has already forgiven him and convinces Dot to do the same. Norman repeats that he was hurt that Dot didn’t let him take over the café, but Dot announces that she wanted him to retire and settle down with her. Both Dot and Norman admit their feelings for each other, knowing they should have told one another sooner but were both afraid the feelings weren’t mutual. Jeanie and Logan sneak away to give the couple their privacy while joking about the feelings they too have kept hidden.
Epilogue Summary
Logan feels happy to attend the unpacking party at Jeanie’s apartment with all of her new friends. Though he’s happy to see Jeanie settling in, he’s also been going to therapy and working through his abandonment fears concurrently. Surrounded by her new community, Jeanie finally feels like she belongs in Dream Harbor.
Chapter 27-Epilogue Analysis
The overarching theme of overcoming The Effects of Fear on New Relationships comes to the forefront in these final chapters of The Pumpkin Spice Café. This section begins with Logan’s fears at their peak when he believes Jeanie intends to leave Dream Harbor in Chapter 27. He lets his fear guide his decisions, and even when Jeanie tells him she’s not selling the café, he refuses to believe her. It takes Hazel and Annie talking to him to get Logan to finally see that his fear of Jeanie leaving is tied to his broader fear of abandonment. Hazel notes that because his father left, his mother died, and Lucy abandoned him, Logan was afraid to let anyone else in and didn’t give Jeanie a chance to stay. Logan finally recognizes the ways this fear of abandonment affected his relationship with Jeanie, acknowledging how “he’d let that fear guide every interaction he’d had with Jeanie. It made him want to deny his attraction to her. It made him want to hide what was going on between them. And it made him freak out and jump to conclusions instead of talking to her” (190). Logan’s grand gesture, professing his love to Jeanie in front of everyone at the café, highlights his personal growth over the course of the narrative. His acknowledgement in the epilogue that he still needs to work on these issues and his decision to pursue therapy demonstrate how serious he is about his progress and highlight The Ongoing Process of Healing After Trauma.
As Jeanie’s arc concludes, she too overcomes her biggest fears and insecurities and discovers that The Feeling of Belonging depends on her internal growth rather than external change. Her fight with Logan in Chapter 27 challenges her belief that becoming the “New Jeanie” will ensure her acceptance in the town, raising the stakes of her arc toward self-acceptance. When she learns that Norman thought he could easily scare her away from the café, it catalyzes Jeanie’s epiphany that her quest to belong in Dream Harbor is a personal one, dependent only on herself. Jeanie begins to focus on integrate herself into the community by working hard to make the café what she wants rather than what others think it should be. She does so on her own, without help from Logan.
At the start of the novel, Gilmore positions Logan as Jeanie’s strongest tether to Dream Harbor, but by the end of the novel, Jeanie has embraced herself and her place in the community independent of her relationship with him. When her Aunt Dot arrives back in town, Jeanie feels proud to show her what she has done with the café, content and happy with her progress rather than struggling to fit the mold of the person she thinks she should be. Once Jeanie starts to embrace her place in Dream Harbor on her own terms, those around her immediately recognize it as well, as evidenced by Logan’s ability to picture their future together in Chapter 31. The unpacking party in the epilogue symbolizes the completion of Jeanie’s arc, reinforcing her belief that she belongs in Dream Harbor and is there to stay. Not only does she see that the friends helping her unpack want her there, but Jeanie’s confidence in herself allows her to picture a life with Logan.
In the conclusion of The Pumpkin Spice Café, Gilmore leans in to the trope of a happy ending consistent with the romance genre. Everyone who deserves a happy ending gets one as a reward for the trials and tribulations they’ve faced throughout the story. However, Gilmore departs from convention slightly by having the epilogue follow the final chapter only days after the action of the rest of the novel to highlight the changes Jeanie and Logan must make in their relationship as ongoing—changes that cannot be implemented instantly. Logan begins therapy to work on his fear of abandonment in the space between the last chapter and the epilogue, and Jeanie is just settling into her apartment in Dream Harbor, indicating that, though they are happy in their relationship, there is still work to do. Gilmore foreshadows a happy future for the couple by hinting at the Thanksgiving dinner they will attend together the next day where Logan will meet all of Jeanie’s family and their lives will become even more integrated. Additionally, Gilmore’s conclusion also establishes the beginnings of many other characters’ romantic arcs, hinting at future relationships to be explored in the Dream Harbor series.
