There, I just saved you three hours.

The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/432040.Andrea_Israel">Andrea Israel

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I cannot believe that this got published. This is the story of two women who grow up as sort of friends/penpals.  They also for no reason exchange recipes.  The recipes are included in the book, and are bogus.  I don't think too many women out there who know their way around a kitchen are impressed by recipes for cooked carrots.  Just saying.

So the characters of Lilly and Val are supposedly friends, and the book is their letters to one another over 35 years.  The conflict is supposed to be the tension between them because Lilly's father Issac is more fatherly to Val than to her.  But honestly the real tension is in the writing, as the authors strain to communicate emotion in stilted, overly formal and sometimes outright hostile letters.

You are clearly supposed to like both characters, but I hated both.  Lilly is supposed to be kind of a bitch, and comes off as the worst person in the world.  Her 'redemption' is supposed to come when she arranges an abortion for Val, which really does nothing to impress the reader.  Val is meant to be tender, caring and kind, but comes off as naive, clinging and childish.  I kept wondering, why is Val even giving this Lilly person the time of day?  Why does Lilly bother?  She obviously hates Val.

The climax is a revelation of a family secret, which changes the relationship between the characters, but not in a believable way.  The storytelling is at odds with the writing, which seems more journalistic than anything.  And even though the letters cross a span of 35 years, the writing in the letters does not reflect the age of the characters.  The only time clues the authors give are references to historic events, which, frankly, is not important.  It's more important that I can pick up the approximate age of the character at the time of writing than the time the letter is supposed to be written.  Nine year olds do not write the same letters as forty year olds.  It's a fact.

The good thing about this book is it gives me hope.  Apparently all you need to be a successful novelist is a few credits for writing stories for Dateline.

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