Tag: cooking

Book Review, Nonfiction, Uncategorized

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell ~ Book Review

Morgan

Julie & Julia with blondies

Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: September 1, 2005
My Rating: 🍪🍪.5

I’m generally a big fan of food writing, and I’ve heard about Julie and Julia, both the book and the movie, for years, so I decided to give it a try. I knew the general concept: Julie Powell attempts to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in a year. I really enjoyed the way that the Project, as it is called throughout the book, helped give Julie’s life structure and meaning during a time when she felt aimless. She’s stuck at a job she’s not passionate about and living in a crappy apartment in New York City with no concrete direction for her life. This very unique choice of a challenge started off as just something to apply herself to, but ended up being so much more for Julie. As her blog chronicling the Project garners more attention, she is approached by media outlets, and obviously, eventually gets a book deal.

As much as I liked this overarching theme of finding a creative outlet to help feel fulfilled, the minutiae of the book felt painfully repetitive to me. I understand that there are only so many ways to say that cooking some french dish did not go according to plan, but I found myself skimming entire sections because I felt like I had read them already. I definitely think this book could have been cut down considerably, and packed a more substantial and concise punch.

Conceptually, I enjoyed this book, and it was interesting hearing about a blogger before blogging was all the rage, but after a while, it lost my interest.

My Rating: 🍪🍪.5
Buy Julie and Julia at an indie bookstore near you
Julie and Julia on Goodreads

Book Review, Fiction, Romance, Uncategorized

Dear Emmie Blue by Lia Louis ~ Book Review

Morgan

Dear Emmie Blue with jam cookies

Atria Books
Genre: Romance
Release Date: July 14, 2020
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

I was not emotionally ready for this book. Dear Emmie Blue is a love story, but it’s so much more than that. First off, the concept is adorable: Emmie sends a red balloon with a note on it up into the sky when she is struggling deeply as a teenager. When Lucas finds the balloon and emails her, he becomes her ‘Balloon Boy’ and thus begins a lifelong friendship. Adorable. Before you decide you have the plot entirely figured out from the synopsis: you don’t.

Lia Louis is an incredibly talented writer. Her descriptive language lit up my senses, I could practically feel, smell, and hear the scenes she depicted. The way she captures falling in love, through Emmie, was incredibly relatable and real. I don’t know if there’s a word like ‘tearjerker’ but about feeling butterflies in your stomach, but that’s what this book did for me. That being said, it is also a tearjerker. This isn’t a fluffy romance. Emmie’s past haunts her heartbreakingly through her story, and the losses she experiences in the present are painful. Louis does such an incredible job of creating unique, detailed characters, that the loss of one of them to Emmie felt like a loss to me as well. I was also obsessed with the dialogue in this story. The banter and cheeky comments between friends and love interests had me fully smiling as I read.

I think I’m still reeling a little from this book, as I’m having trouble consolidating all my thoughts. It is, overall, a beautiful story. The theme of finding your own chosen family was such a unique and wonderful addition to the book. This type of love further bolsters its classification as a ‘love story.’ To summarize, I fell in love with this book: the writing, the characters, the dialogue, the complex and bittersweet storyline. It made me physically feel a wide range of emotions in a way that books are rarely able to do. Grab some tissues, read this book, and then let me know so we can gush about it more.

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
Buy Dear Emmie Blue at an indie bookstore near you
Dear Emmie Blue on Goodreads