Nicky Pellegrino - Recipe for Life

A recipe for life should be a simple love and happiness, family, friends, and a little food. But life is rarely that straightforward. Alice wants to make the most of life—after all, she knows how fragile it can be—and knows she never feels more alive than when she's cooking. Babetta has spent a lifetime tending the garden of her tiny house on the Italian coast, supplying food to feed a family now grown and gone. One summer these two women are brought together in a crumbling Mediterranean villa, with the shared language of food. There, under the heat of the Italian sun, or the shade of the pomegranate tree, secrets will be spoken, fears and hopes shared. But life's lessons are not learnt easily.

Comment: Another random pick from the library. I remember I had read another book by this author years ago, but looking at my posts, it turns out I actually read two already! I really no longer remembered the second book, which clearly I've read... that means this is the third I try and the only reason why I took it out of the shelf is because it wasn't a long one.

Alice is a young woman who decides to change her life and do what is enjoyable to her after suffering a terrible trauma. This leads her to start working at restaurants and the food call grabs her and she starts living for the thrill of a professional kitchen. She is also offered the chance to stay for a while with her best friend in Italy, for her friend's mother got herself a house there. It just happens that it's in the same city from which her restaurant's boss is from and this will allow Alice to have experiences she would not think of before, such as working in a real Italian restaurant. With her friend Leila having different goals and the people she gets to know in Villa Rosa, everything becomes different for Alice. But will the lessons be what she really needs?

What seems captivating about this author's work - and this is now the third I try - is how the premise of her stories draws me in and I do feel curious to see what will happen. Inevitably, though, as things progress, I start feeling a little frustrated with the first person narration, which is incredibly limited, and also in this book's case, the direction the author took in regards to the characters' life path, which I think was very poorly done.

Alice suffers a sexual trauma, right as soon as the story begins and this supposedly affects her enough that she feels she need to live her life differently. Fine, a rather predictable POV, but I was a little surprised by how quickly Alice moved on and how little this seemingly affected her emotionally. Of course everyone is different and there are multiple ways one can react to trauma, but having her thoughts really made me see this event as just an excuse...why not having her been robbed or such other situation? The way she behaved and moved on would not need to change from what did happen.

Then, Alice goes on to work on a restaurant and this starts off her new life. I did like this part, I was quite eager to keep reading her sections as she described her days, her routines in the kitchen and her newfound interest in food and in the way the products could work together. Through her friend, she goes on to stay in Italy and this part was very entertaining, her boss also recommends his parents' restaurant for her to learn new things... I figured this was leading Alice to become a chef, perhaps with her discovering she might not need to be a gourmet one, though! The secondary characters around her by now were also interesting but not fully well fleshed.

Throughout the novel, there are also sections told from the POV of Babetta, an old lady who was taking care of Villa Rosa, the estate her friend's mother bought. I suppose this works out as a contrast but to be honest, I wasn't particularly interested and could read these parts quickly.

Another element I should mention is that in the middle of all this, Alice had broken up with her boyfriend after what happened to her and, in my romance-reader mind I imagined this meant she would also find love with someone else.

Well, every plan I imagined went down the drain when, suddenly, Alice is back to her boss' restaurant and the apparent idyllic Italian section is over. Now, Alice is all about the restaurant and what she can do but she has a new boss, for the owner is opening a new place and isn't around as before. Alice is bullied, with other co workers, and then this section ends, and it feels that out of nowhere, she is now in a relationship with her boss! But no worries, because Alice quits.

Well, bummer. The story became thin and ridiculous and I wonder why bother with all the supposed "lessons" she had had in Italy, when now she seems more a housewife than anything else and they don't even marry (if it was meant to be something romantic). 

Then, another section of the story and it's been years and every character is different and made certain life choices and Alice no longer speaks with her best friend, and I was, what? Why? Why these options, what did this benefit the overall plot? The book isn't big so it was easy to read, but what a disappointing development! Things end happy but Alice ended up with a person I thought didn't matter, her life was not to be a chef after all, and this is fine, but... so frustrating. I really think the author planned this story very, very badly.

Grade: 5/10