The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.
There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.
In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
C Pam Zhang
I had no idea what I was in for when I picked up LAND OF MILK AND HONEY earlier this month. I was compiling a weekly booklist called FICTION FOR FOODIES
.
I came across the title, didn’t read the synopsis and here we are.
Let’s talk about the book!
There is a fog that has descended over the horizon as far as the eye can see. This fog makes certain crops infeasible. They choke. They die. Making certain foods unattainable to some, and luxuries to others.
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY is about a chef. Sent to a foreign land, made to perform, to live in servitude. To cover her debts.
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY is:
Sensual
Cerebral
Questioning
Answering
Giving
Intoxicating
Sobering
It was all of things and wholly something else entirely. LAND OF MILK AND HONEY transcended the medium. There is no other way to describe it.
While reading I was transported to a faraway land where our senses were the same yet everything else was different. Strawberries taste the same but mean different things. Cost different things.
I stopped paying attention to time passing and started coming up with things to cook, things to bake, things to eat, and things to devour while listening.
Five out of Five!
Ten out of Ten!
My best audiobook experience of the year!
Thank you to Penguin Random House Audio for the advanced copy!
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY is out in the world today. Make sure to pick up a copy and listen to it if you can.
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Desperate Housewives meets The Couple Next Door in a chilling story of murder and intrigue set in a well-to-do DC suburb.
Sometimes the darkest acts occur in the most beautiful houses…
When Alexis and her husband Sam buy a neglected Cape Cod house in an exclusive DC suburb, they are ecstatic. Sam is on the cusp of making partner at his law firm, Alexis is pregnant with their second child, and their glamorous neighbors welcome the couple with open arms. Things are looking up, and Alexis believes she can finally leave her troubled past behind.
But the neighborhood’s picture-perfect image is shattered when their neighbor Teddy – a handsome, successful father of three – is found dead on the steep banks of the Potomac River. The community is shaken, and as the police struggle to identify and apprehend the killer, tension in the neighborhood mounts and long-buried secrets start to emerge.
In the midst of the turmoil, Alexis takes comfort in her budding friendship with Teddy’s beautiful and charismatic widow, Blair. But as the women grow closer, the neighborhood only becomes more divided. And when the unthinkable truth behind Teddy’s murder is finally uncovered, both Blair and Alexis must reexamine their friendship and decide how far they are willing to go to preserve the lives they have so carefully constructed.
WHAT THE NEIGHBORS SAW
Melissa Adelman
When I finished the book, I hated every character and felt lucky to have the neighbors I have. That is worth the price of this book alone.
WHAT THE NEIGHBORS SAW is a recently released neighborhood thriller by Melissa Adelman. Its stars Alexis and her husband Sam. After scraping together all the funds they could, they were able to purchase their dream home. A Cape Cod fixer-upper in an affluent suburb of DC.
All is not as it seems and shortly after moving in, their next-door neighbor Teddy is found dead. Putting an end to the dream of safety and security within the neighborhood. We follow along as Alexis tries to fit into their new neighborhood which includes, not surprisingly making friends with Teddy’s widow, Blair, and trying to solve the mystery surrounding Teddy’s death.
To make the neighborhood safer, of course!
WHAT THE NEIGHBORS SAW is basic with only the negative things to set it apart from the others. Months from now I likely won’t remember the specifics of the story, but I will remember that Alexis pissed me off.
As a reader, I feel that when you introduce a main character that is problematic you must correct that problematic behavior within the text. It’s not enough that I as the reader understand that the behavior is problematic, I need to know that the author understands that that character’s behavior is problematic as well. Otherwise, I’m left thinking this behavior is acceptable.
Unfortunately, with Alexis, she had a lot of thoughts about race and heritage and wealth and class, and none of those comments, interior or otherwise, were corrected. I understand it’s supposed to be part of the fun that these characters are so bad. It felt a lot more like unchecked racism than any fun I’ve had lately.
I might be the only reviewer that feels this way. For me, WHAT THE NEIGHBORS SAW is average and skippable, problematic, and forgettable.
Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books, and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copies!
WHAT THE NEIGHBORS SAW…⭐️⭐️
And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
Synopsis.
The inaugural title from Roxane Gay Books, And Then He Sang a Lullaby is a searingly honest and resonant debut from a 23-year-old Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist, exploring what love and freedom cost in a society steeped in homophobia.
August is a God-fearing track star who leaves Enugu City to attend university and escape his overbearing sisters. He carries the weight of their lofty expectations, the shame of facing himself, and the haunting memory of a mother he never knew. It’s his first semester and pressures aside, August is making friends, doing well in his classes. He even almost has a girlfriend. There’s only one problem: he can’t stop thinking about Segun, an openly gay student who works at a local cybercafé. Segun carries his own burdens and has been wounded in too many ways. When he meets August, their connection is undeniable, but Segun is reluctant to open himself up to August. He wants to love and be loved by a man who is comfortable in his own skin, who will see and hold and love Segun, exactly as he is.
Despite their differences, August and Segun forge a tender intimacy that defies the violence around them. But there is only so long Segun can stand being loved behind closed doors, while August lives a life beyond the world they’ve created together. And when a new, sweeping anti-gay law is passed, August and Segun must find a way for their love to survive in a Nigeria that was always determined to eradicate them. A tale of rare bravery and profound beauty, And Then He Sang a Lullaby is an extraordinary debut that marks Ani as a voice to watch.
AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu
I am so excited to share this title with you today. I read it just as the weather was warming in California. It comes out on June 6, 2023.
Let’s talk about it…
AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY is about August. While away at college August is trying to adjust to college life: keeping his grades up, getting along with roommates, and finding his place in a harsh political environment. As he reckons with the adjustment, he meets someone that will change the course of his life forever.
We follow along as August discovers what it means to be his mother’s last wishes, his family’s highest aspirations, and most importantly himself.
I liked August immediately. He is living in the shadows of a ghost’s perception of who he should have been. Leaving no room for the good and bad of who he is. It’s a story about August coming to terms with who he is not only to other people but also to himself.
The words in this book were impassioned and there is a natural force behind them. It feels like the story has been waiting a long time to be told. Reading the book felt like releasing a dam.
The hope is that readers will find themselves somewhere within the pages of this book. Somewhere within its unflinching truth. Even if this is not your story the feeling of fighting for freedom will carry to whatever truths you keep hidden and the heavy burdens you carry.
AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY is one of my favorites of 2023! I hope you think about picking it up!
Thanks to Netgalley, Penguin Random House Audio, Grove Atlantic, and Roxane Gay Books for the advanced copies!
AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
