Tuesday, September 18, 2012

CBR4 #31 Aftertaste by Meredith Mileti

Mira Rinaldi lives life at a rolling boil. Co-owner of Grappa, a chic New York City trattoria, she has an enviable apartment, a brand-new baby, and a frenzied schedule befitting her success. Everything changes the night she catches her husband, Jake, "wielding his whisk" with Grappa's new waitress. Mira's fiery response earns her a court-ordered stint in anger management and the beginning of legal and personal predicaments as she battles to save her restaurant and pick up the pieces of her life. Mira falls back on family and friends in Pittsburgh as she struggles to find a recipe for happiness. But the heat is really on when some surprising developments in New York present her with a high stakes opportunity to win back what she thought she had lost forever. For Mira, cooking isn't just about delicious flavours and textures, but about the pleasure found in filling others' needs. And the time has come to decide where her own fulfilment lies - even if the answers are unexpected.Keenly observed and deeply satisfying, Aftertaste is a novel about rebuilding and rediscovery, about food passionately prepared and unapologetically savored, and about the singular contentment that comes with living--and loving--with gusto.

I loved the concept of "courses" to arrange the book's plot. I also loved how food and recipes played a part throughout the book.  Mira was a little crazy and very career driven even to a point where she forgot about her baby.  She did frustrate me because she was always willing to drop everything to go back to her old life.  I was glad to see that by the end of the book she was able to move on and start something new with no regrets.  This book is a good portrait on second chances and blended families.

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