I am pretty disappointed in this book. And the big reason is the title. Plant based foods are just that, foods from plants. They may not necessarily be healthy (chocolate, oils, sugars, etc) but they come from plants. This book is not totally plant based. It's mostly plant based. It has a very large amount of recipes, stating 175. At least 25% of these are not plant based as they include eggs, milk and cheese. The rest are 'vegan'. I find this confusing. It does state in the intro of the book that some recipes are vegetarian. I strongly believe this should be stated either on the cover, or back cover, which says nothing about it. I would be upset if I bought this having an expectation of what plant based is and then had at least 1/4 of the book not be that. To me, that's disappointing.

The other thing that confuses me about this book is there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what is a plant based recipe or not. Some recipes call for soy milk or vegan cream cheese and then another will use all animal ingredients. I don't understand the purpose of this. It would seem like it would stick with one or the other, either use all dairy for dairy products or make the whole book plant based and use vegan dairy products. There's also some recipes that are mixed and it will call for a dairy product and then a vegan dairy product. In the same recipe. So confusing....Also what is soy cream? I have been experimenting with vegan foods for a decade now and don't even know what that is...

Other than those aspects, which are pretty large issues for me, the book is pretty good. I'm thinking this wouldn't be the best for a smaller dorm lifestyle, as recipes call for ovens, food processors, dutch ovens, stovetops etc. So I think if you have a full kitchen you will be able to make most of these. The ingredients aren't crazy or hard to find (other than soy cream...what IS it?? ) The recipes are pretty good, some basics mixed with some fancier stuff. It has a nice variety of recipes and a lot of selection for each section.

The pictures leave something to be desired. Only 24 photos in the whole book. That's only like 13% of recipes. But some people don't care about that. I definitely like to see pictures.

So overall okay. I think it should state vegetarian on the front of the book and I don't think the title should be plant based.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. All thoughts and opinions of the book are my own.