The Strawberry Patch Pancake House

The Strawberry Patch Pancake House (2025) is a contemporary romance novel by Laurie Gilmore, and it is the fourth installment in her Dream Harbor series. The novel follows Archer Baer, a world-renowned chef who discovers that he has a five-year-old daughter and must adapt to small-town life while navigating an unexpected romance with his daughter’s nanny, Iris Fraser. The story explores The Transformation From Ambition to Authentic Fulfillment, Belonging Through Vulnerability and Interdependence, and Healing Through Chosen Family and Unconditional Love.

Gilmore is a Sunday Times and USA Today best-selling author who specializes in small-town romance fiction. Her debut novel, The Pumpkin Spice Café, won the 2024 TikTok Shop Book of the Year award. Her other works in the Dream Harbor series include The Cinnamon Bun Book Store and The Christmas Tree Farm. 

This guide refers to the 2025 HarperCollins Publishers paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, sexual content, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Archer Baer, formerly a driven chef working in Paris, has unexpectedly learned that he is the father of five-year-old Olive Carpenter. Olive’s mother, Cate Carpenter, a former coworker with whom Archer shared a brief relationship in Boston, Massachusetts, died in a recent car accident. Cate never told Archer about Olive but listed him as the father on the birth certificate. A lawyer contacted Archer, explaining that Cate’s elderly mother, Paula Carpenter, cannot care for Olive due to declining health. As the novel opens, Archer arrives in the small New England town of Dream Harbor to meet his daughter and determine if he can assume custody.

Archer notices that the Dream Harbor community is close-knit and nosy, which contrasts with his preference for anonymity and an urban life. While seeking coffee at The Pumpkin Spice Café, Archer collides with Iris Fraser, a local yoga instructor. Iris accidentally spills a tray of smoothies on him, creating an awkward encounter. Frustrated, Archer rushes off to meet Olive, but their first meeting goes poorly. Archer, Paula, and the custody lawyer agree on a six-month temporary custody arrangement. Archer will become Olive’s primary caretaker, with Paula retaining visitation rights. Olive is withdrawn and anxious, rarely speaking to Archer.

Struggling to adapt, Archer rents a cottage, hastily prepares a bedroom for Olive, and searches for work that will provide them both with a stable home life. He ultimately accepts a position as a cook at a local diner owned by a woman named Gladys, setting aside his Michelin-star ambitions to fulfill the stability required for Olive and the custody agreement. Archer quickly becomes frustrated when his culinary aspirations conflict with the reality of small-town diner work.

Meanwhile, Iris faces eviction after accumulating overdue rent. Gladys, seeing Iris’s predicament and Archer’s need for childcare, suggests that Iris become Olive’s live-in nanny, a position with free rent. Despite her aversion to children and lack of experience, Iris reluctantly accepts due to financial necessity. During Iris’s interview at Archer’s new home, Olive runs away to the neighbors. Olive, who has been largely silent with Archer, speaks readily to Iris. Desperate for reliable help, Archer hires Iris. As a live-in nanny, Iris struggles with self-doubt and uncertainty about working with children but gradually establishes a routine.

At Gladys’s diner, Archer tries to modernize the menu with elevated comfort food. The townspeople resist all changes and specifically demand the original diner pancakes. Archer cannot obtain the original recipe because only the previous cook, Martha, knew it. Archer’s frustration mounts as the “pancake problem” becomes a point of contention. 

Meanwhile, Olive’s grief persists, but Iris forms a genuine bond with her, using playfulness and creative distractions to connect with the child. Under Iris’s care, Olive opens up, laughs, and begins speaking again. Over time, Archer’s efforts to bond with Olive begin to succeed. Archer and Iris are attracted to each other, leading to late-night interactions filled with growing emotional intimacy. Iris helps Archer adjust to parenting while maintaining her own ambivalence about becoming too attached. Olive regularly sleepwalks and is often drawn to the neighbors’ house at night. This leads Archer to install a system of hanging Christmas bells as a door alarm.

The attraction between Archer and Iris intensifies as they share confidences during Archer’s after-hours kitchen sessions, where he tries and fails to recreate the diner’s original pancake recipe. Their intimate moments are often interrupted by Olive’s sleepwalking, and the two adults struggle to keep their growing relationship secret, fearing the impact of town gossip on the custody arrangement and on Olive herself.

Olive begins to thrive, bonding with Archer and expressing affection for Iris. Archer, guided by Iris’s suggestion, solicits the town’s input at a lively public meeting to solve the pancake issue, though the search for the original recipe is ongoing. He starts naming new pancake specials after townsfolk, which becomes a beloved tradition. Gradually, Archer’s work at the diner and his commitment to Dream Harbor gain community acceptance.

When Olive becomes ill at school, Iris panics and contacts Archer, who successfully manages the crisis. The experience bonds them further as de facto co-parents but increases Iris’s anxiety about her competence and the possibility of repeating her own mother’s pattern of abandoning relationships. After their first sexual encounter, Archer and Iris agree to keep their relationship private, framing it as primarily physical.

As Archer becomes more integrated into the community, his relationship with Iris deepens. Iris reconnects with her mother, which helps her reflect on her own feelings about family. After Archer and Iris admit their love, they continue to hide their relationship, concerned about potential complications for Olive and Archer’s custody situation. Olive, increasingly secure, expresses her desire for Iris to attend school events as a mother figure. 

At the inaugural Strawberry Fields Forever Festival, Archer, Iris, and Olive attend together as a family. However, during a puppet show, Olive wanders off. The subsequent search becomes frantic. She is eventually found safe, but Iris is overcome with guilt after losing track of Olive. After experiencing unexplained symptoms, Iris also realizes that she is pregnant with Archer’s child.

Overwhelmed and convinced that she is unsuited for motherhood, Iris abruptly resigns and leaves the house without explanation, moving in with her cousin Rebecca (“Bex”). Iris leaves heartfelt notes for Archer and Olive, as well as a box of Bisquick pancake mix. Archer and Olive are devastated. Archer struggles to maintain a stable environment for Olive, who continues to ask about Iris and hopes she will return. Archer decides to let Olive have a pet bunny, cementing Olive’s feeling of agency and belonging.

Iris receives support from her friends and Bex, who encourage her to reflect on her own upbringing and make an informed choice about motherhood. The Dream Harbor book club and key community members sense Iris’s pregnancy and offer discreet emotional support. Inspired by these conversations and her deep longing for Archer and Olive, Iris decides to keep the baby and seek reconciliation.

Iris returns to Archer’s home, seeking forgiveness and expressing hope for a future together. Olive greets her joyfully, and Archer, initially stunned, reacts positively to the news of the pregnancy. Iris proposes to Olive that she move back in and that they all become a family, a sentiment that Archer affirms. Olive embraces the idea of being a big sister.

With Iris back, the family celebrates the grand reopening of the diner, now named The Strawberry Patch Pancake House after Olive’s suggestion. Archer’s parents visit, and the community welcomes the blended family. Several months later, Iris gives birth to a son, Owen, during an ice storm. Archer nearly misses the birth but arrives in time. Olive, after meeting her brother, asks to call Iris “Mom,” and Iris joyfully accepts. The novel closes with Archer, Iris, Olive, and Owen thriving together in Dream Harbor.