The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate

From the bestselling author of See Jane Date and The Secret of Joy comes a charming, warm-hearted story about a woman’s search for happiness after inheriting her grandmother’s cooking school.  When Holly Maguire inherits “Camilla’s Cucinotta,” her late grandmother’s home-based Italian cooking school in Blue Crab Island, Maine, twelve of the sixteen students for the upcoming fall class drop out. After all, Holly isn’t a seventy-five-year-old Milanese love goddess, whose secret sauces had aphrodisiac properties and whose kitchen table fortune-telling often came true. Holly, a broken-hearted thirty-year-old who’s never found her niche, can barely cook at all. But she’s determined to keep her beloved grandmother’s legacy alive.

Armed with Camilla’s hand-scrawled recipe book, Holly welcomes her students: apprentice Mia, a twelve-year-old desperate to learn to cook Italian to stop her divorced father from marrying his ditzy girlfriend; Juliet, Holly’s childhood friend grieving for her newborn—and the marriage she left behind on the mainland; Simon, struggling to be an every-other-weekend dad to his young son after his wife left him; and Tamara, a single thirty-something yearning for love.  Mixing fervent wishes and bittersweet memories with simmering sauces and delectable Italian dishes, Holly and the students of The Love Goddess’ Cooking School create their own recipes for happiness and become masters of their own fortunes.


What I Can Tell You:

I thoroughly enjoyed The Love Goddess' Cooking School. Holly was a great character and I loved how her Nana's (I called my grandma that too) diaries helped complete the story.  Each character takes on a personality at the hand of Melissa Senate and you find yourself cheering for each one as they shield their skeletons and move on with the help of food. Most of us know, or can recall a time, or even many times when food helped us cope, heal, share and deal with moments that may have caused us stress. I appreciated the simplicity of the story and how mature Holly became as the story progressed. In the beginning I wasn't sure if Holly was going to be a character I liked. After her initial breakup she seemed immature, unsure, lost, and alone, her transformation made the story and I rooted for her the whole way.


I am excited to read more of Melissa's work




Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of The Love Goddess'Cooking School by Melissa Senate from Gallery Publishing.