Book Review
This sounds fantastic! Romance, drama, & ghosts. What more could you ask for? Especially on a blustery October day.
Cooking for Ghosts (Release Date: October 1st, 2016)
Do hearts broken long ago forever leave a tangible trace?
A Vegas cocktail waitress. An Indian herbalist. A British chemistry professor. An Italian-American widow. Four unique women with one thing in common: each is haunted by a tragedy from her past.
Cynthia, Rohini, Jane, and Angela meet on a food blogging site and bond over recipes. They decide on impulse to open The Secret Spice, an elegant café on the magnificent ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary, currently a floating hotel in Long Beach, California. Rich in history and tales of supernatural occurrences, the ship hides her own desperate secrets.
The women are surrounded by ghosts long before they step aboard, but once they do, nothing is quite what it seems. Not the people they meet, not their brooding chef’s mystic recipes, and not the Queen Mary herself. Yet the spirits they encounter help them discover that there’s always a chance to live, as long as one is alive.
Nominated for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, COOKING FOR GHOSTS is an unforgettable tale of love, redemption, and divine female power.
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My Thoughts…
This novel is jam-packed with satisfying morsels. From my first bite (okay, I’ll drop the food references), I got drawn into the web of intrigue. At first, I worried about getting lost in all the characters, but was pleasantly surprised at how Davis juggled them all. Before I knew it, I happily followed these complex personalities on their personal journeys. In addition, as the paranormal activity and real-life dramas unfolded, I fell deeper and deeper under the author’s spell. The tension comes at us from all angles, tied together with wonderful descriptions.
Davis’ portrayal of the Queen Mary enhances the story. In fact, the setting is a character all her own. One of the things I absolutely love is the way Davis builds on the actual history connected to the ship, fictionally filling in the gaps, and breathing life into the past. This also creates an eerie feel as I wondered when and how each of the ghosts was going to show up. Overall, this multi-layered plot is quite effective.
Additionally, as a female reader, it’s refreshing to experience true-to-life dynamics between the women in the book, women of a range of ages, as well. Bravo! Furthermore, Davis tackles a gamut of relatable situations. Romantic entanglements, the loss of loved ones, and domestic violence/abuse are just some of the topics boldly depicted. By the end, I was eager follow these sagas into the next installment of this series. This is a tricky maneuver on Davis’s part, since she craftily wraps up every single last one of the loose ends in this novel, yet baits us with wanting more.
If you enjoy paranormal stories with a splash of romance, you need to get onboard with reading Cooking for Ghosts. You won’t regret this fun immersion. Good luck coming up for air when it’s all over!
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