A Recipe for Disaster

by Belinda Missen

Goodreads 

Meet Lucy, master wedding cake baker, idealistic school canteen crusader, and someone whose broken heart just won’t seem to mend…

Lucy is quietly confident that she has made the right choices in life. Surrounded by friends and family in a small country town, Lucy can easily suppress the feeling that something is missing from her life.

But when a blast from the past arrives in the form of her estranged husband, international celebrity chef Oliver Murray, Lucy’s carefully constructed life begins to crumble beneath her like overbaked meringue.

Is Oliver’s return all business or is it motivated by something more?

A Recipe for Disaster starts long after most love stories would have ended, proving it is never too late to offer someone a second slice of cake or a second chance.

Perfect for fans of Carole Mathews, Mhairi McFarlane and Carrie Hope Fletcher.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

A nervous Oliver was like Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket. You knew there was one out there somewhere, but you’d be hard-pressed to find it without some serious legwork.

A small crowd of adults gathered around the cake, like it was baby Jesus in the manger. Instead of offering me any kind of rare gifts, they offered my cake to the Instagram gods.

My vagina is depressed – that is officially something that can happen, mind you– and I don’t know what to do… It’s a thing… They waste away and die. God knows they probably drop off and run away of their own volition.

You don’t know this is for sure, though, so let’s not roll down worst case scenario hill, it’s right next to depression valley and crazy cat lady land.

I slipped across the road and into my car, all the while reminding myself there were no cakes in prison, nor were there any savoury pinwheels or cheese twists.

A local bookshop is, and I quote, going down quicker than a cheerleader on a Saturday night. Can we please stop by and buy some books?

 My Review:

I giggle-snorted my way through this delightfully witty and cleverly written tale. I have a new favorite author to fangirl as I treasured Belinda Missen’s cunning and irreverent sense of humor and would gleefully worship at her writing desk as her rabid acolyte. I had reams of favorite quotes to painfully whittle down to include in my review. The characters were quirky and endearing yet deeply flawed and I held my breath for them as a couple as I couldn’t tell what outcome this sly scribbler was going to choose for them. Lucy was a prickly pear and still nursing a grudge and tended to be defensive and pick unnecessary fights and fly off in a temper, yet I still adored her.

The writing was crisp and insightful and pulled sharp visuals to mind while tripping my salivary gland and whetting my appetite with the keenly detailed efforts of, and the sumptuous meals and delectable treats created and ingested by, Chefs Oliver and Lucy. For some reason, my clothes feel a bit tighter – as if my immense enjoyment of Ms. Missen’s crafty and delicious words had led my traitorous body to believe I had actually consumed the vast amounts of butter and sugar described. Curses! If this phenomenon were possible it would surely happen to me.

Author Bio –

Belinda Missen is an award-winning and best-selling author, screenwriter, and freelance writer from Geelong, Australia.

A reader from an early age, Belinda began writing her own stories shortly after her love affair with Steven Spielberg’s film Jurassic Park began. What began as fan-fiction soon took deeper root, and she was scribbling out strange little stories in empty notebooks she found laying around the house.

With qualifications in transport and office administration and a combined career of fifteen years in these industries, Belinda decided to uproot everything in 2013 and return to her first love of writing. She now writes full-time, between cups of coffee, binge-watching television, and feeding her cats and husband.

In April 2016, she was awarded the JOLT Courthouse Youth Arts Award in the Inspire 26+ Category for her pieceObsession.

In February 2017, her book Love And Other Midnight Theories clawed its way to the top of the Amazon charts in its category of Performing Arts, beating JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. True story – she has the screenshots to prove it.

When not dabbling in the written word, Belinda can be found mentoring other writers, beta-reading, reviewing, helping others to ready books for publication, and sleeping. In the digital world, she can be found online at Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest