Delicious! - Ruth Reichl

[goodreads]

Title: Delicious!
Author: Ruth Reichl
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 384
Date read: December, 2016

Trying to escape her unhappy past, Billie Breslin leaves her home in California for New York to take a job at the premier food magazine Delicious!. Everyone there cooks but Billie refuses to, despite her perfect palate; she prefers to write about recipes rather than revisit a past she would rather forget.

At Delicious!, Billie discovers a treasure: the magazine's hidden library. There she finds the letters of Lulu Swan, a young girl who wrote to the magazine in 1941. As Billie reads Lulu's vivid evocations of wartime life, she finds that she is able to make peace with her own grief... and sets on a journey to meet her in person...


I really, really wish I could have given this book five stars straight, but it just didn't quite make it. The book is divided up into 3 parts, and the first part was so decidedly my favourite, that I had to subtract half a star because the other 2 parts couldn't quite live up to it.

This is the third book I've read by Ruth Reichl, but her first novel, and it completely lived up to my expectations. It had all the interesting food tidbits I wanted (at least in the first part... this was where the two other parts slacked off) and a large cast of interesting characters. I loved Billie, Sammy and Sal (... his entire family, come to think of it), and while I wish "Mr. Complainer" had been fleshed out more, he did seem decent enough.... even if I did think he was extremely unreasonable in their fight!

I'd guessed the "twist" at a fairly early stage, but that's alright - it made sense.

So all in all very enjoyable book. I just wish the first part had been longer!