Book Review: Recipes for Disaster

By Gail Allison

Don’t read this novel hungry. Consider this your first (and only) warning. Peppered (pun absolutely intended) with delicious real recipes that you can try out in the comfort of your own kitchen, Recipes for Disaster is a quick frolic through the opening days of Lisa and Adam’s relationship that are absolutely fraught with calamity. Sheryl Browne seems to have hit on a winning combination of hilarious and romantic, and this novel was a welcome addition to my Kindle collection.

Lisa is completely in like with Adam. Not in love. Not yet. But maybe very soon. After all, he’s the perfect guy. He’s charming, he’s handsome, and he loves his mother. She wants nothing more that to impress them both, so she enlists the help of her best friend and culinary genius Becky to help her create the perfect lunch for them. Of course, she doesn’t mention that Becky was a huge part of the delectable meal she prepares. And Adam’s mother is impressed enough to steamroll Lisa into catering her golf club’s banquet. Not wanting to admit defeat in front of "her Maj" (as she is called throughout the novel), Lisa accepts.

The catch: Lisa absolutely, without a doubt cannot cook. And neither can Adam. With Becky running interference in the kitchen, Lisa and Adam take on the terrifying task of catering a dinner for his mother’s entire golf club. Meanwhile, Becky has distractions of her own, in the form of a no-good boyfriend she’s about to kick to the curb, an up-and-coming website, and the photographer who is helping her with the website and could not be more delicious, himself. Maneuvering between Becky’s, Lisa’s, and Adam’s voices, we learn more and more about the characters they are, the characters they live with (a chatty parrot and a tiny dog who thinks he’s a Rottweiler), and who they want to be.

This short novel was definitely a lot of fun, and the recipes look delicious. I haven’t tried one yet, but they’re on my list for a day when I have some free time and want to create! There’s actually a dessert recipe in this book that takes 2-3 days to make. Hello, challenge!! The only downside I could find to this novel were the numerous jumps between voices. As it’s told in the first person between Lisa, Becky, and Adam, the changes from voice to voice were frequent and, at times, jarring. Personally, I would have liked to see entire chapters in a single voice rather than having the narrative jump around that much.

All in all, this was a light, fluffy morsel of a book. It was interesting, it drew me in, and it was quite cute. Plus, it has the added bonus of recipes throughout. At only 99 cents on Kindle right now, that’s a treat that I can definitely afford!!