One fun thing about reading is recognizing some of yourself in the characters. In a lot of ways, the main character of Life From Scratch is little like me--she is from a wealthy family and never learned to cook, she's quite a bit younger than me, and she's recently divorced. She lives in New York and is Jewish. However, what we have in common is that we are both bloggers, and we both like to see out stat numbers go up.
Rachel was married at a workaholic lawyer who was busy trying to make partner at a New York law firm. She decided to divorce him when she realized his job would always come first. Following her divorce, she planned to spend a year "finding herself" and living off her savings. She starts a general blog, and soon realizes that without an income she is going to have to learn to cook or her money is going to run out soon. It doesn't take long for her blog to morph into a a blog about her adventures learning to cook--with some of her life interspersed--kind of like my blog started as a general blog and morphed into a pretty much book blog.
Each chapter of the book begins with an entry from her blog and the book follows her through that first post-divorce year. She learns about herself, she learns about others and she learns to cook. The book is written in the first person, and while at time Rachel comes across as self-absorbed, the author keeps things just light enough that reader doesn't take things too seriously. As a newly single woman, one thing Rachel does is finds a man, and while the scenes with him are not the most graphic I've read, the reader definitely has a bird's eye view of the proceedings. Life From Scratch takes a look at the goals of young adults, and whether the lives they are living meet those goals. It also explores how lack of communication can hurt relationships.
The author, Melissa Ford, is a real-life blogger who writes a blog called Stirrup Queens about her journey with infertility.
I'd like to thank Belle Books for providing a review copy. Grade: B
You can order a copy of the book at Melissa's book site. It goes on sale December 1.
Thank you so much! I love hearing someone's thoughts after they read something I've written. Another thing bloggers have in common -- because what is a review except a long comment?
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, once you learn about sitemeter, it can be interesting to watch the numbers, see where people are from, etc.