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Georgia May Jackson has loved cooking her whole life, from the years she remembers as a little girl watching Julia Child with her mother. She’s been training and working in Paris for a decade, and now she is just about to achieve her dream of running her own restaurant there.
But the events of just one day may have ruined that dream. She caught her longtime boyfriend and fellow chef with another woman and made a hasty decision to get back at him. And she’s lost her sense of taste!
Just as all that happens, she receives an email from the mother she hasn’t seen or heard of since she was 5 years old. Star invites her to visit her on a scenic island off the coast of Seattle. And Georgia decides to go. Maybe she can not only get some of her longtime questions answered and reconnect with her mom, but also get back her “spark” of cooking. She’ll need her spark and sense of taste if she will have any chance at all of getting a job that’s open as head chef at a restaurant in Paris.
Of course, the whole visit brings a lot more than she had anticipated. For one, a handsome but mysterious oyster farmer frustrates but also attracts her. And her mother, a free-spirited hippie type, tells her several things she had never expected. Her gift for making delicious food is more than just a well-trained talent. And San Juan Island, well, it’s a beautiful place that somehow slowly brings out that spark of hers that had been almost extinguished.
Recipe for a Charmed Life is a nice little confection of a romance story that focuses not only on love but family and finding one’s passion. I listened to the audiobook version, and it was fine; I think I may have just preferred to read it on my Kindle, but I was traveling a long way and needed something to keep me occupied. (I think I’m coming to find that I like audiobooks only if they’re really great books and exceptional narrators. This one was neither, for me, at least.)
If you’re looking for a light chick-lit book with a touch of magical realism this summer, this one should fit the bill for you. I didn’t love it, but other readers who are more devoted to this genre will really enjoy it. Plus, it’s pretty clean reading.
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes around 10 instances of moderate profanity, a use of mild language, and a couple of uses of moderate French profanity (not translated into English). Sexual content includes kissing and a woman catching her boyfriend in the act, with mentions of the woman having her top unbuttoned and chest exposed and his having his fly open.
