I've done a lot of brick building lately, almost all of which has been Lumibricks/Funwhole sets due to my newfound love of the brand! After all, who doesn't love cheaper-priced sets that actually have a higher quality than LEGO? No stickers, a full light kit- what's not to love? Well, read on for this particular set, and you'll find out!
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The Book Cafe is an older set (2024) in the Funwhole/Lumibricks lineup, but you can still buy it today on their website. The set is part of the Town Life series, a series that I'm quite familiar with now that I've already built (and reviewed) the Newstand, the Italian Homestyle Restaurant, and the Greenway Clinic.
The set has a nice selection of minifigures with lovely printed torsos. All of the figures fit in with the set quite nicely; you can almost smell the coffee roasting and the sounds of book pages turning.
This was not a particularly difficult set to put together (in fact, my eight-year-old son built most of it). However, there weren't nearly as many clever building techniques or interesting minibuilds that I've become accustomed to with more recent Lumibrick sets.
This set is a steal compared to LEGO brand sets, but compared to other Lumibrick sets, I'd say this one falls a bit short in terms of overall value for the money.
The Book Cafe was clearly designed to be a display piece, except it even fails at doing that well, with no jumpers to pose minifigures (and the minifigures simply fall out of the chairs if the set is jostled even the tiniest bit). It does look nice sitting statically on a shelf, but that's about it.
Well, not every set can be a true winner. Admittedly, if this was my first-ever Lumibricks set that I built, I'd probably be much more inclined to give it at least 3 or 4 stars. Unfortunately for the Book Cafe, I've already built (and reviewed) MUCH better Lumibrick sets, so the only honest option for me is to give this particular set a single star.
In the end, the Book Cafe is not a bad set. However, it doesn't do anything overly well either. It's lousy for play. It's barely adequate for display purposes. It's difficult to access the interior. And, most importantly, the Book Cafe shows its age compared to the newer and much better Lumibrick sets that have been released since 2024.
When the bar is consistently high, there's more room to go down than up. There were three things that I really liked the look of from your photos: the coffee station, the tiled roof, and the bay windows.
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