For the Love of Food

THE GIRLS’ GUIDE TO LOVE AND SUPPER CLUBS           By: Dana Bate        2.7 Stars

Chick lit is hit and miss for me. The Confessions of a Shopaholic series is a personal favorite of mine, but most of the other ones turn out just ok. I can’t totally pinpoint why I prefer some and not others, so I do feel bad when I criticize the authors who don’t quite catch my attention. Sorry Dana Bate, but I have to add you to my just alright chick lit list.

As a general overview, we have Hannah. She is a girl in her mid-twenties who has a horrible boyfriend, a horrible job, basically horrible everything. I started reading this book when I was not having one of my finer moments, so I was actually glad that everything went wrong for Hannah. However, that soon changed and I could barely stand her or any of the characters by the end.

Eventually Hannah and her boyfriend part ways and Hannah moves into a basement of a town house owned by someone who works with congress (the book is set in Washington D.C.). Hannah’s parents and ex-boyfriend never understood her love of cooking, so this new starts means she can finally hold the underground supper clubs she has been so enamored with.

Tragedy soon ensues when Hannah’s apartment floods and she has nowhere to hold her club, except her landlord’s place, who is conveniently out of town and left her his house keys. Hannah doesn’t feel too bad about trespassing since her supper club isn’t exactly legal either. She doesn’t have a license from her health department to charge people for food among other problems, like her landlord is running for a community political office and his platform is none other than these possibly illegal underground supper clubs.

Of course disaster after disaster happens to build up drama for the book. My biggest problem with this drama is it doesn’t feel like bad luck or an addiction or impulse that is hard to avoid, it is because the protagonist just dives in without thinking anything through. She has another option to hold the supper club, but after one failed try to use it, she just gives up and continues with trespassing. On top of that, she complains that her parents treat her like a child, but in fact she does spend most of the book acting like a child who doesn’t have a backbone and will take whatever is given her without any thought of how those actions might have consequences. She needed some serious lessons on how to take control of her life and make a plan (legal) to work toward her goals.

After her break up she meets her landlord and another guy through the supper club. None of the guys are really that intriguing. In fact, like Hannah, whose last name is Sugarman, her landlord’s last name is Fischer. As if it wasn’t enough to have a cook/baker with that last name, her landlord is constantly talking about ships, and the sea, and seafood and uses phrases for anything that will fit into that area. The characters (and the language) just seem too forced into the stereotypes.  

I think I might be done with what I didn’t like about the book. What I did like was the food. I loved the themes and the menus that went along with them. The recipes in the back are always a nice touch, but I was disappointed that Hannah’s famous cinnamon rolls and carrot cake recipes were missing.

All in all, not one of my most favorite, but if I were lying on a beach somewhere and just looking for a mindless read with a little entertainment, then the book would have been much better. So perhaps if you are a foodie, or even a want-to-be-foodie, and just desire to have a little fun, this might be the perfect book for you.