Book Review: Delicious!

Book: Delicious! by Ruth Reichl

Source: Library

Rating: 3 stars

Review:

Um...it's a little hard to try to figure this out. What started out as an unassuming yet interesting story turned into a pseudo mystery that wove history throughout all with food as the backdrop. There was also a slight romance that went from slow building to almost insta-love but thankfully didn't become completely.

There were so many things I loved about this. I loved all the descriptions of the food and furniture and how New York city was described. I even enjoyed the mystery of the letters as the story unfolded. It's just that near the end of the story (or in section: Book Three) I found that the story had drifted away. But regardless of all that, it was still a good story, I do wish the last few chapters of the story had stayed as good as the rest.

Delicious! follows the story of Billie Breslin a California girl who decides to forgo her last year of college to take an assistant job at Delicious! magazine in NY with hopes that she would eventually get to write. The job opportunity wasn't the only reason Billie was interesting in leaving her hometown, she was fleeing from a terrible tragedy in her past.

Billie was the stereotypical wall flower/Jan Brady type and although she loved her sister she did have an inferiority complex, it wasn't until she met a few of the more outgoing characters that she started to slowing come to see herself in a new light. She was transforming from this person who didn't really think they had much going for themselves into a whole new more confident person.

But most of that transformation didn't really occur until after the magazine went under and she was offered a job to stay on and answer reader questions. She also had a second job working at a cheese shop which brought her into contact with a guy who she called "Mr. Complainer" since he's always complaining about something yet in a good natured sort of way.

As Billie continued answering reader questions, she and her friend Sammy, a former Delicious! magazine employee, found a secret room hidden in the back of the library. Inside the room, they found very old letters written from many readers but the letters they found most interesting were the ones written by a young girl named Lulu Swan. The letters centered around World War II and how she and her family, friends and others as they dealt with the war.

This wasn't bad and I did enjoy it, just wish the ending was better.