Melissa Senate

Camilla’s Cucinotta: Italian Cooking Classes. Fresh take-home pastas & sauces dailyBenvenuti! (Welcome!) Holly Maguire’s grandmother Camilla was the Love Goddess of Blue Crab Island, Maine—a Milanese fortune-teller who could predict the right man for you, and whose Italian cooking was rumored to save marriages. Holly has been waiting years for her unlikely fortune: her true love will like sa cordula, an unappetizing old-world delicacy. But Holly can’t make a decent marinara sauce, let alone sa cordula. Maybe that’s why the man she hopes to marry breaks her heart. So when Holly inherits Camilla’s Cucinotta, she’s determined to forget about fortunes and love and become an Italian cooking teacher worthy of her grandmother’s legacy. But Holly’s four students are seeking much more than how to make Camilla’s chicken alla Milanese. Simon, a single father, hopes to cook his way back into his daughter’s heart. Juliet, Holly’s childhood friend, hides a painful secret. Tamara, a serial dater, can’t find the love she longs for. And twelve-year-old Mia thinks learning to cook will stop her dad, Liam, from marrying his phony lasagna-queen girlfriend. As the class gathers each week, adding Camilla’s essential ingredients of wishes and memories in every pot and pan, unexpected friendships and romances are formed—and tested. Especially when Holly falls hard for Liam . . . and learns a thing or two about finding her own recipe for happiness. Melissa Senate Melissa Senate

The Love Goddess' Cooking School

Jessica Ford

This was a fun book to read. I really liked all of the characters and the story, and especially the descriptions of the Italian recipes, but it definitely seemed like a cookie-cutter story. Although I knew exactly how it would end, it was a good read.

From the bestselling author of See Jane Date and The Secret of Joy comes a charming, warm-hearted story about a woman’s search for happiness after inheriting her grandmother’s cooking school. When Holly Maguire inherits “Camilla’s Cucinotta,” her late grandmother’s home-based Italian cooking school in Blue Crab Island, Maine, twelve of the sixteen students for the upcoming fall class drop out. After all, Holly isn’t a seventy-five-year-old Milanese love goddess, whose secret sauces had aphrodisiac properties and whose kitchen table fortune-telling often came true. Holly, a broken-hearted thirty-year-old who’s never found her niche, can barely cook at all. But she’s determined to keep her beloved grandmother’s legacy alive. Armed with Camilla’s hand-scrawled recipe book, Holly welcomes her students: apprentice Mia, a twelve-year-old desperate to learn to cook Italian to stop her divorced father from marrying his ditzy girlfriend; Juliet, Holly’s childhood friend grieving for her newborn—and the marriage she left behind on the mainland; Simon, struggling to be an every-other-weekend dad to his young son after his wife left him; and Tamara, a single thirty-something yearning for love. Mixing fervent wishes and bittersweet memories with simmering sauces and delectable Italian dishes, Holly and the students of The Love Goddess’ Cooking School create their own recipes for happiness and become masters of their own fortunes.

Christina M Masters

This book made me feel the feels! I will admit that I am totally an emotional reviewer when it comes to books, which is why on occasion my opinion of a book can change on reread. This is rare but it happens. But, this book falls under one of my favorite genres, magical-realism. Not to mention, it talks a lot about one of my favorite types of food, Italian, so right away I was sucked in. 

You follow the story of Holly, who shortly after a heartbreak, decides to move back in with her fortune-telling grandmother temporarily until she figures out what she wants to do with her life. Sadly her grandmother passes away two weeks later leaving her the house and her famous Italian cooking shop, where Holly will have to use her "limited" cooking skills to teach classes. Sounds a bit sad right? The book doesn't make it sad though. There are certainly sad moments and let me tell I read a chapter late in the book that had me bawling, but mostly because it reminded me of my own grandmother and how beautiful memories, even sometimes the not so great ones can be. 

This is a type of book that I like to call a hot chocolate book because while there are serious and sad situations that do arise the book overall makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. My one complaint would be that I thought some of the situations were resolved a little quickly, but then again there is only so much you can fit in a book that is less than 400 pages. So if you need a bit of a pick-me-up book, that isn't overly angsty and can be quite fun at times I suggest this book.

The Love Goddess' Cooking School

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