Jules Costa thought her career was her whole life, until disaster forced her back to her family's olive farm on the shores of Lake Garda. Now she has one summer to save her cookbook, uncover a web of long-buried family secrets, and figure out why her Nonna's magical recipe collection refuses to reveal a single page to her. Oh, and somehow ignore the fact that her childhood heartbreak grew up and moved next door.
My Review
3.5 stars
Lake Garda in summer, a magical cookbook that reveals recipes one by one, a Nonna who steals every scene she’s in, and a childhood sweetheart who grew up to be even more annoyingly perfect. Rachel Linden had me at the premise and delivered on almost all of it.
The setting is transporting. The lakeside market, the olive farm, the homemade pasta and gelato woven through every chapter. I was ready to book a one-way ticket before I hit page fifty. And the magical cookbook at the center of the story is exactly the kind of whimsy I live for in this genre: just grounded enough to feel meaningful, just enchanting enough to keep you turning pages. Nonna Bruna is an absolute force. She carries this book on her tiny eighty-year-old shoulders and she knows it. Alongside her, Alex’s arc, quietly opening up to the idea that love and belonging aren’t conditional on a last name, was the emotional throughline I didn’t expect to hit me as hard as it did.
But Jules. Oh, Jules. I spent 230-something pages watching this woman be surrounded by sun-drenched beauty, a devoted grandmother, a found family healing old wounds, and a man who is steady and warm and, by all accounts, gorgeous and she STILL needed to think about it. I cannot stress enough how little Seattle was offering her in return. A Trader Joe’s commute and roommates she doesn’t even like. Babe.
The frustration is real, but so is my affection for everything else Linden built here. This is a warm, charming, food-soaked Hallmark dream of a book, and if you can make peace with the protagonist’s choices faster than I did, you’ll probably round up to five stars without hesitation.