Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs

Goodreads Summary:
Shortly before turning the big 5-0, boisterous party planner and Cooking with Gusto! personality Augusta “Gus” Simpson finds herself planning a birthday party she’d rather not—her own. She’s getting tired of being the hostess, the mother hen, the woman who has to plan her own birthday party. What she needs is time on her own with enough distance to give her loved ones the ingredients to put together successful lives without her.

Assisted by a handsome up-and-coming chef, Oliver, Gus invites a select group to take an on-air cooking class. But instead of just preaching to the foodie masses, she will teach regular people how to make rich, sensuous meals—real people making real food. Gus decides to bring a vibrant cast of friends and family on the program: Sabrina, her fickle daughter; Troy, Sabrina’s ex-husband; Anna, Gus’s timid neighbor; and Carmen, Gus’s pompous and beautiful competitor at the Cooking Channel. And when she begins to have more than collegial feelings for her sous-chef, Gus realizes that she might be able to rejuvenate not just her professional life, but her personal life as well. . . .

My Thoughts:

Over all I really liked this book. This was a really good choice for a light summer read that isn't centered around a teen aged girl. Gus is older and has a life that is complicated but not hard to believe. The only part of this book that kind of let me down was toward the end. Sabrina, Gus's daughter, rushed into planning a wedding for the cooking channel. This section of the book seemed out of place with the rest of the book in that every character and their actions were slowly built and explained. This portion was not slowly planned, it felt rushed and that annoyed me. I will say that the actual ending of this book did not let me down, even though it was predictable. It was the kind of predictable that you smile about not roll your eyes about.

I would recommend this to fans of Kate Jacobs (she wrote the Friday Night Knitting Club) and anyone looking for a summer read.

While writing this review I was listening to the morning news.