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pn_hinton 's review for:
The Recipe Club: A Novel about Food and Friendship
by Andrea Israel, Nancy Garfinkel
This was a book for my book club and one of my picks so I was super excited to start it, if for nothing else than to try some of the recipes in it. The synopsis was intriguing and I am a huge fan of epistolary books so it seemed to have it all.
Overall I enjoyed the book but it wasn’t without its flaws. Personally, I found it hard to tell the difference between grown up Val and Lilly in their back and forth emails, although for their younger counterparts it was much easier to see a difference in the ‘voice’ pattern. I also found it somewhat unbelievable that girls that young knew recipes that complicated and could consistently replicate them on the fly. That required almost too much of a suspension of disbelief.
The ‘fight’ or whatever you would call it that caused them to not talk to for twenty some odd years seemed a bit weak. Even factoring in their young ages and Lilly’s dramatic personality, it was something that in the long run, shouldn’t have shaken the friendship or caused them to not talk for that long. And that is coming from someone who can admittedly be very petty. I feel that, if their friendship had been that solid, they would have come together much earlier than they did. But again, that’s an opinion that others may or may not share.
There were a lot a lot of similarities to Beaches in the sense of one having an overbearing father figure wanting someone to follow in their footsteps and the other one wanting nothing but to perform. That part didn’t sink in until I had finished though so it wasn’t too much of a carbon copy in that regard. But it was there
I was a bit perturbed a the ‘twist’ at the end. It seemed too much like a trope and even then, there was an air of if it was true or not. I felt it could have been completely left out because all the relationships in the book were complicated enough without adding it in. It seemed to try to serve the purpose of both trying to drive Val and Lilly apart while trying to bring them together. But I think most readers just found it to be exactly what it was which is an unnecessary plot device.
It’s a quick and easy read. Everything ties up the way you expect it to be and of course their friendship is renewed at the end. I felt there could have been more done to make it stand out more than it did but I didn’t hate it and it is one that I may pick up again in the future.
Overall I enjoyed the book but it wasn’t without its flaws. Personally, I found it hard to tell the difference between grown up Val and Lilly in their back and forth emails, although for their younger counterparts it was much easier to see a difference in the ‘voice’ pattern. I also found it somewhat unbelievable that girls that young knew recipes that complicated and could consistently replicate them on the fly. That required almost too much of a suspension of disbelief.
The ‘fight’ or whatever you would call it that caused them to not talk to for twenty some odd years seemed a bit weak. Even factoring in their young ages and Lilly’s dramatic personality, it was something that in the long run, shouldn’t have shaken the friendship or caused them to not talk for that long. And that is coming from someone who can admittedly be very petty. I feel that, if their friendship had been that solid, they would have come together much earlier than they did. But again, that’s an opinion that others may or may not share.
There were a lot a lot of similarities to Beaches in the sense of one having an overbearing father figure wanting someone to follow in their footsteps and the other one wanting nothing but to perform. That part didn’t sink in until I had finished though so it wasn’t too much of a carbon copy in that regard. But it was there
I was a bit perturbed a the ‘twist’ at the end. It seemed too much like a trope and even then, there was an air of if it was true or not. I felt it could have been completely left out because all the relationships in the book were complicated enough without adding it in. It seemed to try to serve the purpose of both trying to drive Val and Lilly apart while trying to bring them together. But I think most readers just found it to be exactly what it was which is an unnecessary plot device.
It’s a quick and easy read. Everything ties up the way you expect it to be and of course their friendship is renewed at the end. I felt there could have been more done to make it stand out more than it did but I didn’t hate it and it is one that I may pick up again in the future.