Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor via #netgalley, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it. All opinions are my own..
For fans of Alison Espach's The Wedding People and Dolly Alderton's Good Material, a delectable comedy of manners about cooking, ambition, and friendship set in the food world as a young and socially awkward writer takes a job ghostwriting the cookbook for a famous (and famously chaotic) Hollywood starlet.
Synopsis:
Isabella Pasternack is a food person. She revels in the beauty of a perfectly cooked egg, she daydreams about her first meal at Chez Panisse, and every inch of her tiny apartment teems with cookbooks, from Prune to >Cooking by Hand to Roast Chicken and Other Stories What Isabella is not, unfortunately, is a gainfully employed person. In the wake of a disastrous live-streamed soufflé demonstration, Isabella is summarily fired from her job at a digital food magazine and must quickly find a way to keep herself in buckwheat and anchovy paste. When offered the opportunity to ghostwrite a cookbook for Molly Babcock, the once-beloved television actress now mired in scandal, Isabella warily accepts. Unfortunately, Molly quickly proves herself to be a nightmare collaborator: hungover, flaky, shallow, and—worst of all—indifferent to food. But between Molly’s bizarre late-night texts, goofy confessions, and impromptu road trips, Isabella reluctantly begins to see Molly’s charms. Can Isabella corral Molly out of the gossip rags and into the kitchen? Can she find the key to Molly’s heart and stomach? Or will Isabella’s devotion to her culinary idols and Molly’s monstrous ego send the entire cookbook—and both of their careers—up in flames?
A mouthwatering, hilarious debut peppered with insider food world detail—the real writers behind celebrity chef cookbooks, the hot restaurants that run on the backs of their sous-chefs, the secret to perfect blinis à la Russe—Adam Roberts's Food Person is a literary soufflé—a deceptively light, deliciously rich, showstopping confection.
Review:
Initially I read a shorter synopsis and the book sounded interesting, then I got it and realized it was much more than I thought. I was expecting a milliennial whine fest, but what I got was a book that was so enrapting, I just about read it all in one night! What do you do when settling has been good enough, but life decides to hand you something totally DIFFERENT and send you off in a direction you weren't expecting? For Isabella, working with Molly is both a dream come true and a nightmare- she gets a writing experience, but no credit. When she finally sees a way to make it work, life throws another curveball and takes her out of the game entirely. with a great mother-daughter dysfunctional dynamic, and a redemption story you aren't expecting, this book will win your heart!
About the Author:
ADAM ROBERTS is the author of The Amateur Gourmet,
Secrets of the Best Chefs, and Give My Swiss Chards to Broadway. He started his food blog The Amateur Gourmet in 2004, and also hosts the podcast Lunch Therapy. Roberts has also written for The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, and for film and television. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband and their dog Winston. This is his first novel.
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