Whilst I did enjoy the book, I felt it took too long to get to the point where she told her children about their father's affair. I did like the twist as to who he had the affair with. I found it quite unbelievable that as a mother herself the main character didn't realise her daughter was pregnant for so long.
Other than that I enjoyed the book overall

I was expecting more from this book than I got! I liked the fact it was set in France and she was trying to rebuild her life. However I felt there was nothing much more to the story.

"Whoever said it was easy to walk away from one life and embrace a new one had almost certainly never tried it."

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I was looking for a light, fun rom com type read but this story was so much more than that. Genna is firmly entrenched in a mid-life crisis spurred on by her husband's infidelity. She leaves him and rents a tiny apartment in Paris to do research for her new cookbook and find herself. What she finds is a whole lot of reasons to live her life for herself and not her husband or her children. Within weeks she is surrounded with new interesting friends and several potential love interests. The story was much deeper than your typical rom com and had slow metered building of relationships rather than the insta-love that is so popular in these sorts of books these days.

The descriptions of Paris were quite lovely and had me thinking back fondly upon my trips there and even adding a few new potential destinations to my list. I also really loved how Genna would find her inspiration for the dishes in her cookbook from the places she visited. Going with her on that part of the journey was really fun.

I will say I was slightly annoyed by her family members who were quite selfish and prone to put her in the predictable "mom" box but I think it served the story. Also Marsha's relationship was quite problematic but I appreciated the arc that character took finding her way. I'd say this one is a lighter, more fun Parisian Eat Pray Love.

Love Among the Recipes is a story about Genna, a cookbook author who has been going through a rough time with her husband and has decided to follow her heart and visit Paris for a few months.

Paris is a dream come true, and though money is tight, Genna can’t help but fall in love with it more and more as she visits well known sites and is shown lesser known restaurants. She slowly gains new friends during her stay, some from embarrassing situations and others from French class and through a mutual friend. I honestly adored the descriptions of each new location, and how at times Genna would think of a recipe to go with it. However, the food was actually a very small portion of this book.

Genna, as a cookbook author, loves to try new recipes and is almost always thinking of a food dish (or soo we should believe). Yet food takes a backseat to her love life. Sure she thinks of some recipes and talks to every new person she meets about her cookbook, but most of the time it just tells us ‘Oh I thought of a new recipe! Insert name here’ followed by a brief description of how she would introduce it in her book. She spends more time explaining how the recipe and location pair together that we don’t actually get much food. Which was a huge bummer because I love books about food. For example, Cathy’s Christmas Kitchen was all about baking, and treats and cakes were mentioned almost every page.

As for her love life, Genna is trying to escape from her husband currently, which is why she went all the way to Paris. During her time away from him, she meets two potential partners. One is French, and one is Australian. Pierre is a lawyer and is also divorced. Bill’s wife died about a year or so ago and he is in Paris visiting his son. Genna goes out with both of them, exploring different sites and receiving their help to get inspiration for new recipes. They mostly talk about the location while Genna tries to untangle her emotions to figure out if she likes either of them.

My main complaint is that Genna constantly spoke of how her husband wronged her, but never actually specified what he did until 80% in. Which is weird considering 1) I figured it out from the first time she mentioned it, and 2) it’s actually in the synopsis. The description for this book literally tells us he is a ‘philandering husband’, so why can’t Genna tell us before 80%?? It was fine the first two or three times, but after that it just got annoying.

Overall, I was left feeling pretty disappointed. I still recommend if this interests you though, since I am sure some people will love it!

*I received a free digital copy from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way affects my review*

“Love Among The Recipes” is a romance novel centered around a cookbook author named Genna who travels to Paris, desperate for inspiration for her next book and an escape from her husband. While she is in Paris, romance begins to ensue between her and a French lawyer named Pierre. However, her family ends up coming to Paris, and she has to decide between her life back home or her new life in Paris.

I’m not sure why, but this book ended up not being as interesting as I anticipated. However, while I didn’t love this book as much as I hoped I would, I still think that it was pretty good, and I would still recommend it to fellow romance fans.

Genna is a woman approaching middle age who has left her husband and two children home in Cananda for an adventure in Paris. She is a likeable character though there are moments where I found her frustrating. Genna meets new friends while in Paris and they contribute a lot to the story and are needed to keep the pace going. Throughout the story, there are several hints at why she’s left her husband which I guess is predictable for everyone reading but it doesn’t distract too much from the story.

I enjoyed hearing about the landmarks and dishes she chose to match. Having not been to Paris yet I felt she gave good descriptions and finishing the book does leave you hungry!

This book didn't exactly click with me. The writing style didn't make sense, and the beginning is just bland. The only thing I liked was the France and travel element. I had to DNF the book at 18% due to it almost putting me to sleep.

I lit a candle, drew a bubble bath and sunk down deep with this book.

It was such a fun read! The food made my mouth water and I even poured a glass of wine after my bath because this book had my taste buds yearning.

Genna is oblivious and cute. Her clumsiness is endearing and I absolutely adored the budding friendships in this book. I laughed and smiled at her awkwardness and how she literally tripped, all around Paris, haha.

I read this book in two days and look forward to more stories like this, especially on rainy, cold Autumn days.

Thank you Netgalley for providing this read for me in exchange for an honest review.

Sometimes you've got to take a leap of faith, run into the unknown in the hopes of discovering yourself and I love how this story brings to light love, loss and most of all food and art.
Genna escapes to Paris to write a cookbook and also create as much distance from her husband Drew who turns out has been cheating on her.
I loved how quick she was to connect food to art, and also her moments of uncertainty when it came to her marriage- because that made her more real.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

As someone who has vacated from where I was living my whole life because of divorce, I was excited at a chance to start over. What I didn't do was dwell on the past. The whole point of the move was to start over fresh. This part of the novel really irritated me about the main character. Just let go and move on. Beyond that, the story itself was fairly predictable as I've seen many other readers mention.

I honestly thought there would be more food, more descriptions of food, especially with the title. Of the food that was mentioned, these were the parts that really caughy my attention and could get into, these were the bits that I enjoyed.

All in all for me, it was rather hard to care about the characters mostly because I wasn't particularly invested in them. There were also areas in the writing that just werent keeping my interest, when this happens, I skip pages.

I will say I enjoyed the parts in French. ( I spoke it for 6 years for fun and remembered it.) I would think though that for someone that doesn't have a background in French it would be rather difficult to understand the insertions into the dialogue. Overall, this title just didn't do it for me. I had such higher hopes for this one.

Thanks to #NetGalley for making available this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was very cute and a fun read, but sometimes felt a bit forced. I enjoyed Genna as a character overall, but there were points where I put the book down because I was so frustrated at her not handling situations like an adult, even though she was supposed to be middle aged. The backdrop of Paris was nice, and I enjoyed the traveling and exploring she did, although I was rolling my eyes at points where she made connections between the tourist attractions and the recipes she was going to include in her cookbook.

My favorite parts were Genna's interactions with the members of her French class, because Genna actually used her skills and intellect here to help them accomplish things. I was really hoping for a strong female character, and although she got there eventually, it was definitely a frustrating journey.

Overall, reminded me very much of a Jenny Colgan book, but not quite up to par. Still, a fun, easy read!

I felt through the description that this book had the potential to be better, the writing style wasn’t up to my standards (through years of reading literature, you tend to develop those) it did have its few comedic takes but that was, unfortunately, all I did care for.

I know that contemporary romance isn't my typical genre, but I seem to be craving more contemporaries than usual lately and I do always love a food or travel element incorporated into the plot. Once I realized that Love Among The Recipes would have both, it sounded like a match made in heaven... Sadly, this blind date turned out to be mostly a disaster. I'll try to explain briefly why below.

First of all, I do have to say that I loved the travel element with its many sights of Paris. During this story, you will visit many many known and lesser known sights within the French capital and the descriptions really made the city come alive for me. It almost felt like I was walking through Paris exploring the city myself! The whole travel/cookbook combination is a brilliant idea and the way different recipes are combined with the different sights is probably the main reason I kept reading. It definitely does make you crave French food though!


That said, sadly the travel and food elements were the only parts of the story I did enjoy. The rest of the story somehow simply didn't do it for me... Why? A lot of reasons, but my first main hurdle was with the main character Genna. While I loved the idea behind her character, her being a cookbook author moving to Paris to work on a new cookbook, her actual personality and character development were kind of off-putting. Her way of constantly mentioning 'what Drew did to her' without clarifying started to get old really fast, and instead of adding intrigue I just wanted to slap her and spit it out already. I didn't like how she acted or interacted with most of the characters either, and actually felt bad for poor Pierre and Bill and how she treated them. As for the whole home situation... I didn't like how it was developed at all, the 'secret' only revealed towards the ending while it was quite obvious for a long time what probably happened. Drew was despicable and somehow I didn't really warm up to especially Becky either. This lack of connection to the characters in play made it really hard to stay invested to be honest.

On top of this, I felt that the pace was rickety and slowed down considerably in parts. The recipe and visiting the different sights in Paris part of the story was basically the only part that did keep my interest, but mostly I started skimreading whenever there wasn't any food or travel talk going on, which is never a good sign. The romance itself was quite frustrating as well, and then I'm not even talking about the love triangle (or should I say square?). There were lots of events and elements in Love Among The Recipes that unfortunately ended up annoying me considerably, and I personally struggled to reach that final page. Like I said before, I basically only kept going for the food and travel parts... But otherwise this story sadly turned out to be a quite a disappointment. Fans of the genre might have a different reaction though depending on how they react to the main character and the romance.

I'm going to be upfront here. I think I was the wrong demographic for this book. It's about an older woman who escapes to Paris after her husband cheats on her, and I didn't relate to her struggles. The book was longer than necessary. I felt like 90% of the book was her trying to find food inspiration in Paris and then in the last 10% literally everyone one and their mother showed up and 10 new plot points happened a million unlikely things happened. Every man she comes across is romantically interested with her and she rejects everyone only to contemplate going back to her cheating husband.

It was nice to see so much of Paris in her writing. It made me want to travel so bad. She wrote a lot on french and only part of the time translated it so I felt a bit of a disconnect, since I don't understand french. It was cute and I liked the premise, but I didn't love it as much as I thought I would. 3.5 stars.

I’m ambivalent about recommending this book. I generally like “foodie” novels, but this one had a few drawbacks that made it less enjoyable.

Genna loves to cook and has turned her passion into being a successful cookbook author. Her twenty-eight year marriage has come to an abrupt halt and she has escaped from her beautiful new home in Vancouver to her favorite city, Paris, to write a new cookbook/guide. Leaving behind her husband and two adult children, Genna intends to sort through her feelings and rediscover what is important to her as she moves forward in her life.

What I liked:
The descriptions of the sites of Paris rekindled my own memories of exploring the city. I particularly appreciated Genna’s intuitive process in matching bistro dishes with a particular locale.

Some of the supporting characters were more interesting than the protagonist. I enjoyed her relationships with her crusty landlord and her son.

There is a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming, which was a pleasant surprise in a rather predictable storyline.

What I didn’t like:
The pacing was uneven. I found myself bored in some portions only to become engaged with others.

Genna refers obliquely to the incident that forced her to move from her home and leave her husband many times without revealing the details until almost the end of the book. I found it tedious after a while. The personalities of her husband and daughter were irritating and a bit overblown.

I didn’t care for Genna for the most part. The character development felt flat and did not pull me in on an emotional level.

My thanks to the author, BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for providing the opportunity to review a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was fun. I expected a predictable storyline that was mindlessly entertaining, but it had unexpected turns that kept me interested. The blend of food, Paris, and friends was just delightful.

There was some waffling by the protagonist, which I completely understand, but still annoyed me. Besides that though, I really did enjoy this book very much. The imagery the author paints of Paris and the food was lovely. And I adored the list of food matching locations that’s included in the back. Also, the scenarios and everything she’s going through are very spot on issues you might have mid-life.

I liked this. It did what it said on the tin. However, I felt like it did not stand out from other similar books I have read.

I received an advance copy of Love Among the Recipies, by Carol M. Cram. I thought the book was a little dry and boring actually. Genna moves to Paris to escape her failed marriage. Others might like this book, but it was not for me.

Genna is sitting at a restaurant in paris. She sees a gorgeous man at the restaurant. I really liked Genna. Genna has children. I liked the tone