Book Review: The Glass Kitchen

By Melissa Amster

A few years ago, I read Emily and Einstein by Linda Francis Lee. I loved it and couldn't put it down. Needless to say, I was thrilled when she published her latest novel, The Glass Kitchen, this past summer and couldn't wait to pick it up. While the premise of the novel is food and cooking, as is often the case with Chick Lit, Linda puts a new and interesting spin on the topic.

Portia Cuthcart never intended to leave Texas. Her dream was to run the Glass Kitchen restaurant her grandmother built decades ago. But after a string of betrayals and the loss of her legacy, Portia is determined to start a new life with her sisters in Manhattan... and never cook again.

But when she moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets twelve-year-old Ariel and her widowed father Gabriel, a man with his hands full trying to raise two daughters on his own. Soon, a promise made to her sisters forces Portia back into a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she must confront everything she has been running from. What seems so simple on the surface is anything but when long-held secrets are revealed, rivalries exposed, and the promise of new love stirs to life like chocolate mixing with cream. (Synopsis courtesy of Goodreads.com)

Linda has a comforting quality to her writing. She knows how to immediately draw her readers into her world and keep them there with the promise of good cooking, romance, and magic. The descriptions of people, food, and locations made everything easy to visualize, which I always appreciate when reading a book.  Sometimes the story felt like it was slowing down, but then it would pick up steam when I was least expecting it. There were some fun twists and surprising secrets throughout. It even had some suspenseful moments. Although the concept was surreal, it was fun to imagine as a possibility and definitely served as a benefit to Portia at times.

Overall, The Glass Kitchen was a satisfying novel and a fun escape from everyday life. I hope Linda doesn't wait as long to publish her next novel.

As this would make for a fun movie, here's my dream cast:
Portia: Jennifer Morrison
Cordelia: Jaime King
Olivia: Kate Hudson
Gabriel: Gerard Butler
Ariel: Aryana Engineer

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the book in exchange for an honest review.