I'm rounding up from 3.5 stars. The food! Especially in the first part of the book, the descriptions of the food were rich and mouth-watering. This book was all over the place - I thought I was reading about a food magazine and suddenly the story veered into a tiny mystery and historical fiction. not very realistic and kind of silly, but mostly fun and entertaining. I loved the descriptions of the issues people had with recipes from the magazine. The author was editor for Gourmet magazine for 10 years. The letters and phone calls Billie dealt with as part of the magazine's recipe guarantee were almost certainly inspired by real life reader reviews of online recipes. ( )

Very disappointing. The story, the characters are all very one dimensional. If there is a cliche, you can find it in this book. ( )

This is very fun to read. It is a sort of "rebound" novel for Reichl after Gourmet closed, and she must have put many of the things she loved about the magazine (no, "book") in here, as well as many of the things she loved about good food in New York.
There's also historical mystery, secret rooms, and good make-over story, romance... ( )

Perfect name for a fantastic book. It's just barely possible that the book is a bit saccharine, but I don't care, don't care, don't care. Wonderfully told, wonderfully strewn with food: descriptions, mysteries, appreciation and tragedies. An absolute delight! ( )

I loved this. The plot twists were predictable but the writing was so lovely and the characters so vivid that it didn't matter. ( )