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A Pinch Of Love: A Novel (2011)

by Alicia Bessette(Favorite Author)

3.51 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0452297117 (ISBN13: 9780452297111)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Plume

review 1: Alice Bessette's SIMPLY FROM SCRATCH was an enjoyable read...sort of a quirky little story with interesting characters. I liked the fact that it wasn't just another happy ending--not that the ending was unhappy, but all of the loose ends weren't tied up in a perky bow.Zell, the main character, is a young widow. Her husband has been dead for three years, yet she can't seem to get past his death at all. She doesn't mix with their old friends, and lives a reclusive life in their home with their adopted greyhound.Next door, a young girl, Ingrid Knox, is learning to cope with life without her mother, who abandoned her at birth. Because Ingrid believe a cooking show host to be her mother, she subscribes to the woman's magazine, and wants to learn to cook.Zell is delivered one of... more Ingrid's magazine's by mistake, and decides (despite the fact that she knows nothing about cooking) to enter a cooking contest where the award prize is $20,000 in cash--the amount of money her deceased husband wanted to raise to give to Katrina victims. Zell is determined. She wears Nick's camouflage apron and tries her hardes to make something that "Warms the soul" as the contest describes. Instead, she causes a fire in her oven that brings Ingrid and her father into Zell's life, and reunites her with many of Nick's friends in the volunteer fire department.Alicia Bessette writes in a way that is tender and honest. When she makes her story about friendship, celebrating life, and being able to let go. SIMPLY FROM SCRATCH is both humorous and touching. As we watch the relationship between Zell and Ingrid and Ingrid's father blossom. Zell begins to unfold, and reach out to old friends, and lets herself be vulnerable once more to new relationships.Zell and Ingrid make it to the finalists with their strange but interesting dessert, but the real prize is in how teaming together for the contests brings these two unlikely characters together. This is a book I would recommend!
review 2: I listed chick-lit as one of my bookshelves for this book, but that was with some hesitation. It deals with the serious topic of grieving, but Alicia Bessette keeps the writing style humorous, but not insulting to the topic of grieving. She keeps a sadness in Zell's, the main character, humor. Each chapter is told from three different character's viewpoint; Nick's, the dead husband, is told from emails sent from his trip to New Orleans, where he was killed.The second topic covered by Bessette the the devotion to Zell from her friends and family. The setting is in a small western Massachusetts town, and the closeness of the people who live there is strongly felt by the reader. Zell's friends don't desert her after Nick's death, although there is some tension between her and AJ, who was present with Nick when he died. Another topic that was in the book is about the resilience of youth. Ingrid, Zell's 9-year old neighbor, lives with her father who is working full-time and going to law school in the evening. Ingrid has an idea who her birth mother is, but that information is kept low-key until the end of the book. No matter the social or economic issues thrown at Ingrid, she meets them head on with the exuberance and trust of youth.The ending was a little rushed and contrived, but it still left me with a few tears, especially during Nick's town-wide memorial service. All in all, I enjoyed the book. less

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