This was a fascinating novel. I’m still not sure what to make of it, but I couldn’t put it down and enjoyed reading it.

Fitz is a musical prodigy — a pianist since he was six. But he’s been utterly sheltered his whole life. His mother marries Husband #8 and goes to England for a year, agreeing to let Fitz go to a private arts school before college. There he meets Garrett. From the excerpt, I expected Garrett to be the love interest, but turns out that on their first date, he peer pressures Fitz into take Ecstasy, attempts to date rape him in the club bathroom, and then leaves Fitz in a dumpster, where he is found by a pair of World War Two-era, European, gay ghosts. After going home with them, watching them have sex, and stealing a cassole pot when the real owners of the house come home, Fitz has to call Ari, his divorced step-brother, to come rescue him.

Confused yet?

It wasn’t as confusing when I was reading it. You have a gift for writing that makes me just dive into and float with the current of the narrative. It works in the story itself and makes me want to keep reading.

Fitz is the center of the story. He’s lonely, shy, and trying to figure out who he is and who he wants to be. He’s got his music but he doesn’t believe he has anything else. He’s experimenting with Goth while his mother’s away, and, ironically, also experimenting with trying to be normal. He doesn’t quite manage to pull off either. He’s nineteen and awkward and starved for attention, starved even for touch, and trying to find someone who values him.

Garrett is an asshole. He out for what he can get and he sees Fitz as an easy mark. He’s not a point of view character and it says more about Fitz than about Garrett when Fitz makes excuses for him.

Ari…was strange. When I was reading, I had no idea Ari was going to exist, so when Fitz called him to save him, I thought he was much older and had no idea he was the second hero. I had to flip to the end to figure out who Fitz was going to end up with before I could continue reading. Ari is at least 25, but probably 27 or so, to Fitz’s 19, which was slightly disturbing. They’d been step-brothers for a few months and, like in Clueless (“You divorce wives, not children”), they’d stayed in touch enough that Fitz’s mother asked Ari to watch out for Fitz while she was in Europe.

Fitz and Ari’s prior relationship was confusing. I couldn’t figure it out completely because the timing didn’t seem to work out. Ari had a thing for Fitz, but hadn’t really talked with him since Fitz was in eighth grade, but had been to all his concerts and performances, but Fitz didn’t know that. Fitz has a bad case of hero-worship for Ari because Ari is perfect and wonderful and older and everything he touches turns to gold (but when did they see each other?). They have to find their way to each other and watching them do it — haltingly, through the interference of Garrett and the ghosts — IS very sweet.

The ghosts are…fascinating. It was very different for me to tell the difference between them. I eventually figured it out, but they’re so much a unit, a couple, that separating their personalities when they had no emotional arc, no relationship tension, no narrative reason for being except that ghosts are cool and they were there to help Fitz figure life out, there was little reason to separate them. It’s wonderful to see a happy couple in a romance, together for ever — literally — and their story is touching. But the narrative itself has to get pretty ridiculous (drug money, kidnapping, and extortion) in order to give Serge and Julian a point for being IN the story and that was almost a shame. It would have been nice to see Fitz and Ari figure things out without needing the threat of death to get there.

So, things were confusing in the beginning and unnecessary at the end. But watching Fitz figure out what he needs and watching Ari figure out how much he wants Fitz is fun. And watching both of them fall in love because they’re perfect for each other but still be able to contemplate sex and relationships with other men was realistic and much appreciated (be warned, readers: there’s almost more sex between Fitz and Garrett than there is between Fitz and Ari. Almost).

But I love your voice and I always have. You’re able to make the characters real and I appreciate that more than anything else. In this excerpt Fitz is trying to get Ari to pay attention to him. He goes to the restaurant where Ari is celebrating a case win with two lawyer colleagues, one gay, one straight (although, really, chosing “Alex” as the name for a minor character when “Ari” is one of your heroes seems a little…odd):

“Are you kidding?” They watched as Fitz shot his second drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and relaxed visibly in his chair. He raked his hair out of his eyes, and Ari could almost feel its texture, how soft it would be beneath his fingers. The waiter approached Fitz, and the little monster had the nerve to shoot him a radiant smile. The waiter soaked it up like sunshine, damn him, taking a minute to chat Fitz up before moving on. Fitz very visibly checked out the man‘s ass as he left.

“Shit, Ari.” Caleb aimed a frustrated kick to Ari‘s ankle. “What more do you need?”

“Stop it, Caleb,” said Alex.

“What is wrong with you, Alex? I don‘t need another conscience.”

“You do if you don‘t have one of your own.”

Fitz shot his third tequila. Ari wanted to kill him. At least he wouldn‘t be driving. As soon as he got Fitz alone, Ari was going to raid his wallet and rid him of whatever fake ID he was using. This is how you get yourself into trouble, Flitz.

“Oh fuck me, is he coming this way?”

Ari looked up just in time to see Fitz walking toward their table. Ari braced himself.

Fitz glanced Ari‘s way and did a double take. “Hey. I know you. Weren‘t you in that boy band a billion years ago? What was it…? Gonad?”

“N0mad,” Ari ground out. “It was N0mad.”

Fitz nodded. “Right. With a zero instead of an o.”

Caleb never took his eyes off Fitz. “How hilarious. I‘m afraid I won‘t be responsible if that gets back to the office, Ari.”

“Sorry, man.” Fitz shrugged. Dark brown eyes twinkled when they met Ari‘s and oh holy hell. Fitz was looking for trouble in the worst way. He said, “You weren‘t the cute one back then, but you grew up hot.”

Then Fitz looked straight at Ari while he leaned over to cup Caleb‘s cheek—right there in the middle of the restaurant—and kissed him, hard. Caleb responded with enthusiasm, deploying hands and a pretty inquisitive tongue. Ari could tell it had gone further than either of them intended when Fitz pulled back, flushed and loopy looking. His eyelids hung at a sexy half-mast, and he smiled like a debauched angel. It had only lasted a bare few seconds, but Fitz had every eye in the place on him.

Ari snorted. Caleb wouldn‘t have pushed Fitz away. No red-blooded gay man would push Fitz away. But he could have at least put up a token struggle. As it was, he sat there with a stupid expression on his face long after Fitz backed off and sauntered past their table.

“You fucking hound dog.” Alex watched Fitz go.

Caleb smirked. “Tell me you wouldn‘t hit that.”

“I would not hit that,” Alex said amiably.

I *love* that Fitz and Caleb both enjoy the kiss so much, even though Fitz is only doing it to piss off Ari. I love that while one person can be a better fit with someone, that doesn’t mean that you don’t find other people attractive. Overall, I enjoyed Ari and Fitz and, when I finally separated them, Serge and Julian. But the narrative need for the paranormal elements seemed slim and the prior relationship between Fitz and Ari seemed underdeveloped. I couldn’t put it down, admittedly, but in retrospect, the holes and confusion almost outweigh my enjoyment in the text.

Grade: B-

Best regards,
-Sarah

Although, $7.99 for 185 pages in only one format?! Really?! What are you thinking, Loose Id?

Book Link | Loose Id | Amazon (book is not yet for sale at Amazon)

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Thank you for sending me this book. I confess I tried to read this book many times, never making it out of the first few chapters. The heroine, Miranda Wake, a food critic, gets drunk at a restauraent premiere and makes some very loud and rude remarks. She then insults the chef, accepts a dare to be in his kitchen for one month, and sells a tell all memoir based on her experiences, which she has not yet had.

But then the book was released and positive reviews popped by readers who had actually finished the book. Finally, Sarah convinced me that it was worth powering through. Yes, she told me, Miranda gets in her own way, repeatedly, but Adam Temple is a “happy alpha” and his motley crew of chefs make it all worthwhile. It’s true. In the end, I did like the book and was glad to have read it.

Miranda Wake is an esteemed food critic in New York. Her restaurant reviews can be scathing and she is followed avidly by the New York food cognoscenti. Unfortunately, Miranda’s quest to become a published author is shot down, again, and her beloved brother, Jess, has left his college scholarship in the Midwest to attend NYU.

Miranda has been Jess’ guardian since they lost their parents when Miranda was 18 and Jess was 10. She has worked hard to provide Jess with everything that she thinks her parents would have provided, including a college education. Not wanting Jess to have to work while studying, she manages to sell a book idea about the kitchen staff of Adam Temple’s new restaurant, Market.

Unfortunately for Miranda she not only gets the dirty goods on each and every sous chef, prep chef and even dishwasher in the Market’s kitchen but she also falls in love with Adam Temple and comes to appreciate the kitchen staff of Market when she works with them for a couple of weeks. But her love for Jess and her guilt at his not having parents drives her to make difficult (and unlikeable decisions).

Adam Temple is finally opening his own restaurant based on the idea of sustainable food. He buys everything local, from his produce to his poultry, and creates food to which he hopes his customers will have a connection. The rendering of Adam is done in large passionate strokes. He is a man of quick temper, but of big heart. His joy for life, his passion for his craft imbued every page. He had an eye for talent and could see potential in the demeanor of the lowest food worker on his crew.

His crew of chefs also had distinct identities even though we were only given small glimpses. Even the food and the cooking were so well done that these elements were almost characters by themselves. I wanted to book a table at Market by the half way mark of the story.

In the end, all the positives of the book: the happy alpha Adam who was an uncomplicated lover of life and of people; the tender and uncertain secondary romance; and the kitchen, food, and cooking negated the not so positive reaction I had toward Miranda.

I understood Miranda’s motivations but I wasn’t convinced by them. Part of this is due to the publication of the book itself. Miranda was writing the book because she needed the money to pay for Jess’ tuition at NYU. But tuition at NYU for four years would be close to six figures. It was unlikely that Miranda’s book would have netted a huge advance. Further, the idea that Miranda could take private cooking classes with Adam, work full time in the Market kitchen and write a 150 page memoir in two weeks seemed beyond improbable. It’s possible that this could have all happened but my credulity was strained and that made it hard for me to see Miranda in a sympathetic light.

I was convinced that Adam loved Miranda and wanted her with a passion that he normally reserved for food and for this reason, I closed the book satisfied. I’ll take a second serving of happy alpha. B-

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers. This is a SMP book so it’s ebook price is insanely high – $14.00.

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I just have to tell you about this manga. This isn’t a typical manga for me to review because it’s not a romance manga, and it’s not really about the characters. It’s about food. I’m a serious foodie. I love exploring foods of all cultures, from low cuisine to high. And I love reading about it as well. Viz Manga has decided to bring over to the US part of one of the most influential food manga series of all time, and if you’re a foodie you’ll probably love it.

First, a note about food manga. The Japanese love them. There are a surprising number of action manga where the hero of the series has special food talents. Yakitate! has a boy with a gift for creating breads unique to Japan. Addicted to Curry is about a chef dedicated to, yep, curries. Kitchen Princess is a shoujo (girl’s) romance about the orphan daughter of pastry chefs who has inherited their talent to please everyone with some dessert.

There are also manga that seek to educate adults. The Drops of the Gods is fairly new one that’s educating the Japanese about Western wines. It has sparked an enormous rise in the sales of wines, especially those discussed in each chapter.

The granddaddy of these manga series is Oishinbo. This massive and extremely popular series of 102 volumes, still ongoing, started in 1983 and sought to educate the Japanese about their cuisine and food customs and give them pride in them. The author says in a short essay that the best word for Japanese cuisine(s) is washoku. The wa means Japanese, but also means harmony. That, he says, is the essence of eating Japanese style. All the elements are present and recognizable, but in harmony. This series attempts to explain all the elements and how they fit together.

Now, Viz can’t bring all 102 volumes over. Well, they could, but they’d probably lose money on a lot of them. Even though I’d buy every one. But they are bringing over select chapters and sections on things Westerners tend to be curious about: sake, rice, noodles, sushi/sashimi.

This first volume covers quite a few basics. Some chapters seem downright silly, as in the cook-off between the demanding bastard father and the (anti-)hero over rice. The father’s chef wins because he goes through every grain of rice and pulls out the ones that are broken or odd shaped so each grain finishes at the same time. It’s so anal it’s ridiculous, but it also serves to support a point all cooks know, and that’s that you want portions you’re cooking to be of equal size so they finish cooking together. It’s a good principle applied in a goofy manner so you remember it.

The book covers why sashimi is an art and not just chopping up raw fish, simplicity as a technique, etiquette with chopsticks, purity of ingredients and letting them stand on their own, and making sure your palate as a chef is clean. It explains several dishes (though doesn’t provide recipes) like daishi broth; it’s more concerned with explaining the heart of it than the how of it, though often the how is involved. There’s also a lengthy section of footnotes, 14 pages in the back, that explain all Japanese customs and words that might not be clear to Western readers. It’s quite thorough and good.

There is a plot of sorts. A young man, Yamaoka Shiro, is a gourmet with a very discriminating palate and an ability to cook that matches it. However, he now works at a newspaper and his main concern is betting on the ponies. One day his editor decides that for their 100th anniversary they will serve the ultimate feast, and knowing Yamaoka’s background appoints him to be in charge (along with a young woman to whom he eventually gets married in a minor part of the story which we don’t really see).

This appointment angers the most important gourmet in town, Yamaoka’s nasty father, a renowned potter who demanded such perfection from his wife in their food that it drove his wife to her grave. Yamaoka in revenge destroyed all his father’s artwork. Needlesstosay, they’re not getting along. Yamaoka’s father sets up a rival feast and constantly challenges his son. (He seriously needs his ass kicked.) The most annoying chapters are when he’s right. But even jerks can teach us things.

The graphics in this are really old-style manga. They’re not bad by any means, but they may look dated to people used to newer manga, especially in their use of block panels a la Western comics. They always illustrate points clearly though, and that’s what concerns me most. Here an American friend of Yamaoka’s has been training in how to make water-chilled sashimi to teach some know-it-alls a lesson (as usual, please start reading from the top of the right page, and please forgive my homemade scans).

As you can see, expressive as they are, the faces leave something to be desired. But the portraits of the food and technique come through clearly. I also included a page from the notes from the back of the book so you could see how useful they are.

The book itself is quality, softbound and larger with a dust-jacket. Viz did a lovely job with it.

I’d read parts of this before, but none of these sections in this first volume. I seriously couldn’t put it down once I got it in the mail yesterday. I found everything about it fascinating, even the irritating father and how he was dealt with by the author, and the anal-retentive bits, because being picky about techniques and ingredients is part of being a good chef. I think anyone with an interest in Japanese cuisines or culture would eat this up. It’s a little choppy because of the way the story was taken apart and put back together, but it should just be read as a series of related short stories, A-.

Sincerely,
ジェーン
(Jān)

Oishinbo, by Kariya Tetsu, illus by Hanasaki Akira. Viz. Retail: $12.99. 272 pages. 1/8 compilation volumes. Rated T for teen (probably because kids probably wouldn’t understand terms and such, but there’s no sex or violence; if you’ve got smart young-uns though go for it.). This book is available for discount at most manga stories like Rightstuf.com

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You are one of the greatest food writers of the 20th century. But I didn’t know it when I first came across you work 2003, completely by chance, in a vacation condo in Corpus Christi. The bookshelf in the condo had a few magazines on coastal living and three books by you. That night, after I’d put my baby to sleep, I sat in the bathroom-’all the other rooms were filled with snoozing relatives-’and read your tightly wound account of a once-superb waiter become alcoholic and dismal, a punch-to-the-stomach tragedy in a dozen pages.

At the end of my three-day stay, I was seriously tempted to take your books home with me. I didn’t. But I never forgot the strange, stark powers of your narrative. So when I saw The Art of Eating, an omnibus collection of five of your best-known books, in early 2007, again accidentally, while looking for a copy of Larousse Gastronomique to help with my research into 19th century French cuisine, I began reading immediately.

Or rather, I began reading The Gastronomical Me, the fourth volume in The Art of Eating and your memoir, immediately, because as much as food history and food anthropology interest me, what I wanted even more were stories from your own life, like the one about the waiter that had stayed with me ever since.

Some books are like wine, flavorful and easy to imbibe. Your memoir is not wine. It is rather like a fierce eau-de-vie, distilled until every sip is fire, and then set on ice-’your cool, spare, unsentimental voice. Because it is so potent, its impact so hard and swift, I did not devour your book, but read it slowly, carefully, in portions of one or two chapters.

The Gastronomical Me begins with this paragraph, as is more or less to be expected, for a memoir with the word "gastronomical" in the title:

The first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam. I suppose I was four.

Food, yes. Yummy food too. But you do not linger on the jam fuzz. There is no pornographic description of its airy texture or its fruity taste, nor any instruction to the ignorant among us how to achieve such delicious fuzz at home. Instead you went on to say:

Women in those days made much more of a ritual of their household duties than they do now. Sometimes it was indistinguishable from a dogged if unconscious martyrdom. There were times for This, and other equally definite times for That. There was one set week a year for "the sewing woman." Of course, there was Spring Cleaning. And there were other periods, almost like festivals in that they disrupted normal life, which were observed no matter what the weather, finances, or health of the family.

Many of them seem odd or even foolish to me now, but probably the whole staid rhythm lent a kind of rich excitement to the housebound flight of time.

Thus the tone of your book is set. It is not really about the food, despite its title. Or rather, it is only about food in the sense that life itself is about food, that we spend so much of our waking hours cooking, eating, feeding-’or hungry. We eat when we are happy. We eat when we are bored. We eat when we are lonely beyond endurance. And we still must eat when the world slowly tilts into violence and madness.

And so it was that the great love affair of your life unspooled against the violence and madness of WWII. You rarely referred to the war directly, but it was there, heavy and ominous. And what matter-of-fact details you chose to write of it stuck into me like knives, especially this brief bit about two Jewish women who lived their lives at sea:

The two most discreet girls on board were what was spoken of quite casually by the officers as "water babies."

They were married, both of them, to men in concentration camps. They seemed to have plenty of money, and for safety and probably from habit they had not set foot on land since they escaped from Germany. Instead, they went back and forth from Europe to America, sometimes for months on a single ship, making one trip as the First Officer’s girl, the next as the Second’s, and so on.

Somehow, your laconic allusion to the strange lives-’and livelihood?-’of these two women affect me more than any books or movies about the Holocaust I’ve ever across. I cannot forget them. I think of them in their endlessly waterbound days, in the seemingly insular security of an oceanliner. I think of the gaiety they project that amuse and attract the ship’s officers. I think of the way they almost believe in the gaiety and the security and the rootlessness of their existence, as if they never had a life in pre-war Germany, never married men who were dead or dying in Dachau.

The way you depict the most life-changing events of your own life, too, has that extraordinarily matter-of-factness about it. On committing yourself to leaving your first husband to be with your second-’the love of your life-’while crossing the Atlantic, you wrote:

Then came a small storm. I found myself standing alone in the cold moonlight, with spray everywhere and my black cape whipping, and my face probably looking a little sick but covering, I am sure, wild and unspeakable thoughts. Suddenly I seemed so ridiculous, so melodramatically Mid-Victorian about my Hopeless Passion, that I blushed with embarrassment, straightened my hair, and went down to the bar.

Chexbres was there, of course. We celebrated, with the first of ten thousand completely enjoyable drinks: I, my release from my own private soap-opera, and he, my God-sent recovery from what was to him an inexplicable case of frigid and sour-pussed ill humor. Everything was all right after that, for as many more years as he was on earth, and I lived secure and blessed for those years too, through many terrors.

But he would die all too soon. You never named his illness. You never told us what he did, what he looked like, where he was from, how you met him, or how he died. You never even used his real name. And it never mattered. I knew you loved him beyond measure because you wrote this:

Chexbres studied the winds, the soil, the way the rains came, and he knew more about how to grow things than the peasants could have learned in a thousand years, in spite of their cruel toiling. He felt truly apologetic about it.

The infinite pride in those words. It was enough.

The days of your happiness had a gleam to them, like sunlight on water. And when Chexbres’s health failed, and you both knew his days were numbered, that happiness lost its pastoral brightness, but acquired an intensity almost like despair.

Again on an ocean crossing, you wrote:

We got up late, and went after bathings and shavings to the Lounge, where we sat in soft chairs by the glass wall and looked out past the people sunning themselves to the blue water. We drank champagne or sometimes beer, slowly, and talked and talked to each other because there was so much to say and so little time to say it.

There was a singular strength to such love. It isolated and protected.

We were past the pain and travail, that was all. We were inviolate.

I believed in that bubble of love. I wanted it to be, as you said, inviolate. But alas, even consuming love could not shield you from everything. On a train crossing from Switzerland into Italy, something happened. There was a broken window with jagged glass, and water all around that window and all over the station-’the aftermath of a successful suicide: an escaped and recaptured political prisoner had chosen to cut his throat on the glass rather than to go back to prison. You wrote:

By the time we got to Milano everything was almost alright again, but for a few minutes the shell cracked. The world seeped in. We were not two ghosts, safe in our own immunity from the pain of living. Chexbres was a man with one leg gone, the other and the two arms soon to go-a small wracked man with snowy hair and eyes large with suffering. And I was a woman condemned, plucked at by demons, watching her true love die too slowly.

-I felt illimitably old, there in the train, knowing that escape was not peace, ever.

That is one of the most heartbreaking passages I’ve ever read. And I was all the more devastated because for much of the rest of the chapter leading up to this shattering moment, you talked only about food, the comfort and familiarity of a good luncheon cooked and served by a galley staff who knew you well. Like you, I never expected that lovely quotidien calm to splinter, to expose your vulnerability so utterly and mercilessly.

At this point, it is incumbent upon me to point out that the entire book is not wrenching to this degree. There are other more amusing interludes, stories that warmed the heart, and even passages of sheer gluttonous delight. It would also be remiss of me not to say something of your trenchant prose, which I love. The book is full of little gems like this:

-like the concert-grand piano in the Ladies’ Salon, painted a rich creamy pink (with mother-of-pearl keys), so that it looked like a monstrous raspberry in the pistachio mousse décor.

And this:

The Hansa was a tidy, plump little ship. There was something comfortable about her, and at the same time subtly coarse and vulgar, like a motherly barmaid married to a duke in an English novel.

I cannot say whether The Gastronomical Me was pessimistic or optimistic. I think it is a true portrayal of life, ordinary and extraordinary turn by turn. It is as you said, in a quote I love so much that I placed it at the very front of Delicious,

When I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it-and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied.

And for that, The Gastronomical Me is, and will always be, one of my favorite books.

Yours sincerely,

Sherry Thomas

This book can be purchased in trade paperback from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format.

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When I read your historical romance debut, Private Arrangements, in February of this year, I was enchanted. The note I wrote in my book log reads as follows: “Excellent, excellent debut. Beautifully written and characterized, and quite different from the usual historical romance (especially in allowing a heroine to be less than saintly). My only complaint is it could have been a little longer – the ending felt a bit rushed.”

So, my anticipation level was quite high when I opened Delicious. Happily, I was not disappointed.

The story begins with this irresistible line:

In retrospect people said it was a Cinderella story.

…that line and my experience with your earlier book were enough to signal that I was in for one subversive fairy tale. And who doesn’t love a subversive fairy tale?

In 1892, Bertie Somerset unexpectedly drops dead at his Yorkshire estate. The death comes as a shock to everyone; Bertie was only 38 years old and not known to be in bad health. Among the surprised mourners are Bertie’s notorious cook and erstwhile lover, Verity Durant, and his estranged half-brother, barrister and rising politician Stuart Somerset. Bertie’s tangled and fraught relationships with both Stuart and Verity, and Stuart and Verity’s with each other, form the heart of the plot of Delicious.

I should probably take a moment to note that as with Private Arrangements, Delicious is told partly through flashbacks. Chapters Three, Five, Seven and Nine flash back ten years to 1882, and detail some of Verity’s history with Bertie, as well as her first meeting with Stuart. I recall some readers complaining about the flashbacks in Private Arrangements, a complaint I didn’t agree with. I felt that that book was actually enriched by not being written in a linear fashion. I feel the same way about Delicious – in fact, in the case of this book, I think a linear plot would have detracted from the story a great deal, since the threads that tie these characters together are only gradually revealed in the course of the story.

Stuart is a wonderful hero – the illegitimate son of a nobleman, he has tried to make up for his disreputable origins by becoming a model of rectitude. He is a politician concerned with social justice, but also, like any politician, he’s ambitious, and his chances of rising high indeed look very good. Stuart becomes engaged to a family friend early in the story, a young woman whom he likes and feels will be an asset to his career.

Verity is at first a little harder to get a handle on – she’s a woman with a murky past who has had to recreate herself, and her personality is marked both by sadness over losses she’s never quite gotten over, and at times an impetuousness that would seem to belong to a younger woman. She is definitely an unusual and sympathetic heroine.

Delicious interestingly juxtaposes Verity’s vocation as a cook against Stuart’s, for lack of a better phrase, food issues. Unlike his sybaritic brother, Stuart’s relationship with food is joyless and purely functional, at least until Verity comes back into his life. Stuart’s first taste of Verity’s cooking (a cucumber soup that is, he thinks, “sublime”) is described thusly:

He cared nothing for food. Hadn’t in ages and ages. Food was sustenance, something to keep him alive and healthy, nothing more. A dinner at the Tour d’Argent was no different from a dinner at the lowliest fish-and-chip shop: just dinner.

This was not just dinner. This was as dangerous and unpredictable as the presence of a scantily clad woman in the cell of a monk who’d taken a vow of chastity.

He set down his spoon. Thirty years ago he’d have begged for one more sip.

Twenty years ago he’d have been thrilled to discover that his sense of taste hadn’t permanently atrophied. Ten years ago he might have taken this sudden reawakening of his palate for an augury of wonderful things to come, things he’d wished for with the single-mindedness of a long-buried seed seeking the unbearable beauty of a world drenched in light.

Today he wished only to read his newspaper at dinner without being distracted—or profoundly disturbed—by a bowl of soup.

Food plays an important part in Delicious, and some of the descriptions were mouth-watering enough to make me hungry.

Speaking of mouth-watering – I’ve become one of those jaded romance readers who more often than not ho-hums at love scenes. That said, the love scenes in Delicious were very effective, and yes, hot. Especially the first one, involving Stuart coming upon Verity in his bathtub (the scene was so luscious that I forgave it its contrived set-up).

There is a nice secondary romance between Stuart’s fiancée Lizzy and his secretary, both of whom have hidden depths behind their proper facades.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate reading a historical romance free of spies, nefarious plots and mustache-twirling villains. The villains in Delicious, such as they are, are merely real, flawed people – selfish and misguided, with their own hurts motivating their bad behavior.

I also have to say, without giving anything away, that I loved both Stuart’s and Verity’s behavior near the end of the book. They were such adults – in the best sense of the word. They behaved with honor, but not the self-sacrificing faux-honor of so many romance heroes and heroines (especially the heroines). They had made those mistakes in the past and learned from them. How refreshing!

My final grade for Delicious is an A. Ms. Thomas, I will be eagerly anticipating your next book; you’re well on your way to being one of my favorite historical romance authors.

Best regards,

Jennie

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format on July 29, 2008.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Delicious by Sherry Thomas
2. REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas
3. REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

Book two and all is still well between us. Keep this up and I’ll stay a happy woman and keep writing you nice reviews. I used to think I didn’t care for Victorian era historicals – something about the facial hair of the men and hairstyles of the women – but you’re still luring me into parlor palms and antimacassars.

I’ll admit that when I started the book, I wasn’t too sure for a while exactly what was going on. The heroine is a fallen Lady who cooks divinely, yea even unto making English people sit up and notice. I got that. She’s got an illegitimate son but he’s in a good home and being raised to be a gentleman. So far so good. Her employer just keeled over during the soup course and, what’s this?, they’d had an affair and he refused to marry her after she thought he would? And then she remains his cook for 10 years? Even after she had a ‘one night to remember all my days’ with his illegitimate half brother. Oh my. What’s going on here?

And the half brothers who used to be close ended up in the law courts making life miserable for each other? And the Lady cook’s Dowager Duchess Auntie is a vengeful old biddy, hell bent on denying the poor woman a second chance? And the obvious hero of the story is now engaged? And his fiancee is trading barbed snipes with his secretary? I needed to find a mental happy place.

Or did I because despite all this doom and gloom I was smiling and chuckling.

The upper-crust gentlemen of this country were valiant in battle, decent to their inferiors, and passably competent in bed, but they were, almost without exception, helpless before the simplest of domestic tasks-’and proud of it, taking it as a badge of their true gentility.

"Strong spirits only give Cinderella a hangover to go with her heartache," she said, even as she took a swallow of the whiskey. "It makes her terribly cross in the kitchen."

"I thought Cinderella was always gentle and kind and uncomplaining."

"Do you know why?" She looked up at him, her voice suddenly heated. "It’s because these tales have been written by men, men who have never spent so much as an hour in the kitchen. The real Cinderella curses, smokes, and drinks a bit too much. Her feet hurt. Her back hurts. And she’s resentful. She would like her pumpkin coach to run over the Wicked Stepmother. And Prince Toad too, if possible."

And despite the flashbacks – which I didn’t have a problem understanding – I was beginning to find my way around the plot and to root for the characters. Plus you also can condense emotions and situations down to the essence.

Then she put her arms to use. She clutched him to her, as if she were a grasshopper and he the last day of summer, and kissed him back.

At the church she’d mostly had a view of the back of his head, a view that had been further obstructed by an inconveniently placed pillar. He’d sat at the foot of the pulpit, while she’d stood at the very back, in a huddle with the other servants-’the distance between them sixteen rows of pews and the whole structure of the British class system.

I still wasn’t sure how you were going to work out the ‘oh by the way the hero is engaged to someone else’ angle as I recalled from watching “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” years ago that broken engagements could be very costly and damaging to reputations. Then there was the fact that for half the book, the hero still hadn’t realized that the woman he’d loved for 10 years was right under his nose and I was getting more than just a little bit impatient with all the close calls, convenient handkerchiefs, masks supplied by the hero no less and improbable bathroom encounters.

And…and…how could Stuart have been legitimized? Was that possible then? Because Fairleigh Park had to be entailed or else Stuart would have got it when his father died since everything but entailed stuff was left to him. I am confused.

I think foodies will swoon with joy as they read about the delectable creations Verity and her minions create.

The conversation that had reached a steady hum as the soups were brought in faltered abruptly when the first spoonfuls reached unsuspecting lips. Potage imperatrice was a thickened bouillon. Potage Fontanges was, if one must be blunt about it, a soup made from pureed peas. But the looks of amazement on his guests’ faces would have one believe that they’d been given sips from the Fountain of Youth.

She’d outdone herself. He didn’t know how it was possible, but the flavors of the soups were more fierce and more seductive than anything he’d ever tasted. He was robbed of speech, almost of thoughts altogether. The only thing left to him was a hot, brutal grief-’and a relentless wish that that it didn’t need to end this way, swift, merciless, final.

His guests’ silence was the one small mercy of the evening. Beside him the dowager duchess ate carefully, soundlessly, the expression on her face half way between pain and bliss.

Toward the end of the course, the conversation tentatively resumed. No one spoke of the food-’the experience was too strange, too unnerving for a roomful of good, solid Englishmen and women who’d never had their attention commandeered by mere dinner. Instead, they murmured distractedly of the weather and the deteriorating congestion of the roads.

That fledgling conversation ground to a halt each time a new course landed on the table. The hush that descended was half astounded, half reverent. There were startled gasps when the pâté chaud came around. Even something as mundane as an ice to clear the palate between the courses received solemn, undivided attention.

By the time Mme. Durant’s variation of the bombe glacée arrived on the table, layered, in deference to the weather, not with ice creams, but with vanilla custard, chestnut cream, and chocolate mousse, all the good breeding and restraint represented at Stuart’s table were barely enough to hold back his guests from launching themselves face-first into their desserts.

However, when I read this, I did tear up and unlike Verity, I didn’t for one minute doubt Stuart would come through like a champ.

"I understand everything," he said slowly. "And I accept it as a price I’m willing to pay."

"You do not understand." The dowager duchess stomped the floor with the walking stick. "Your wife, and consequently yourself, will be shunned everywhere. Doors will close in your face. Opportunities will flee before you. Your life, as you know it, will be finished. "

"No, madam, my life will have finally begun. I do not need the blessing of the Liberal establishment to practice law. I do not need the approval of Society to keep Fairleigh Park. And I will gladly be shunned on her behalf."

Tears came again, hot and sweet. This was how a prince slew dragons for his princess.

"You are mad, Mr. Somerset." The dowager duchess’s voice trembled.

"I have loved her from the moment I first saw her, madam. She has left me and I have left her. And now we are at last together, nothing, save death, will part us again. Not you. Not the Liberal establishment. Not the opinion of every last man, woman, and child in England." He bowed. "If you will excuse me, I’ve been away from her far too long this day already."

For that I’m willing to accept that this is a Cinderella story and a little more fable than possible reality, that the Dowager intends to resurrect her niece from the grave, that the world will happily welcome said Lady back into the bosom of High Society and that Verity and Stuart expect people to eat off that dining room table after what they’ve done on it. B

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format on July 29, 2008.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas
2. REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas
3. REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas