"Ode to Love, Growing Up, and Italian Food"

By: Melissa Senate

Genres: Romance Contemporary

Posted: December 14, 2010

As a captivating ode to love, truth, growing up, and Italian food, Melissa Senate's THE LOVE GODDESS' COOKING SCHOOL is a hands-down keeper with a unique story and characters that I couldn't help but love.

Holly Maguire has been searching for love most of her life, even more heartily since her fortune-telling Nonna told her that he would love sa cordula, an old world delicacy of lamb intestines and peas in a butter sauce. When her world is turned upside down by her current love's rejection and beloved grandmother's death, Holly moves back to Blue Crab Cove determined to preserve her grandmother's memory and cooking school, and carve out a life for herself in the process.

Taking up the charge to run Camilla's cooking school, Holly realizes that students flock to the Cooking School for more than cooking lessons; they come to learn lessons in healing and love. It was sweet getting to know the four students that make up her class. Simon, Tamara, Juliet and the young apprentice Mia, add just as much to the story as the Italian food that courses through the tale. I found myself rooting for them as they overcame life's challenges, and my heart went out to them in their struggles.

Believable, unique, and satisfying, Senate pens a touching story that will make you hungry for Chicken alla Milenese and creamy Tiramisu.

Book Summary

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.

The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate

The Love Goddess' Cooking School

by: Melissa Senate

Gallery Books
November 1, 2010
On Sale: November 16, 2010
Featuring: Holly Maguire
352 pages
ISBN: 1439107238
EAN: 9781439107232
Trade Size

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