My Five Word TL:DR Review: Twisted, unreliable and totally delicious

I loved The Dead Husband Cookbook, it was addictive.  The set up, the writing, the mystery, the twist, the characters, it hooked me and held me in its sway until the last morsel was devoured.  It took me in unexpected directions and it is definitely a book that I would love to read again (for the recipes especially) and frankly I think it would make a fantastic adaptation – I would watch it for sure.

As the story begins we meet Thea Woods, an editor for Hanes House publishing, she’s worked there a number of years and her career was on a satisfying trajectory until she made a major error in judgement and everything she’d worked to achieve came crashing down round around her.  As we make Thea’s acquaintance she’s been called into the office for a meeting with her (once friend) boss and she hopes to hand in her notice before she’s officially ‘let go’.  As it turns out it seems that Thea is about to receive a lifeline.  Hanes has been chosen to publish the much sought after novel by Maria Capello (more below) and this is conditional upon Thea editing her story.

So, Maria is both famous and infamous.  She has cookbooks and tv shows firmly under her belt, not to mention a range of sauces that people can’t get enough of.  At the same time her very successful husband disappeared many years ago – was it suicide or did Maria murder her husband and turn him into meatballs?  Speculation has run amok for years and so everyone is waiting, eagerly, for this new book in which she has promised to ‘tell all’.

Now, Thea’s reprieve doesn’t come without strings.  She needs to spend time at Maria’s home, leaving her young daughter and husband at home, she needs to turn in her mobile, because Maria is paranoid about leaks and she is only given one chapter at a time to read – which, combined with the poor wifi at the remote family farmhouse – is going to make turning this submission in by the deadline very difficult.

Straight away Thea is drawn in by Maria’s story, written well and in many ways similar to Thea’s own family life, she is totally absorbed by the read.  At the same time she is shocked when she discovers that another guest at the house during this time is someone who was fundamental in her own downfall.

I really enjoyed this read.  It’s written well.  Thea isn’t above doing some investigating (snooping) and often takes chances that gave me the heebies.  She’s under pressure both from work and in her homelife and is desperate to make this opportunity work out.

As the tension mounts Thea’s imagination runs riot – and, to be fair, with good reason.  All the family are secretive and Maria’s children are definitely not happy about this most recent development which threatens to expose the family even more.

This is a contemporary novel but the remote setting and Maria’s paranoia and Thea’s imagination all feed into the tension really well.

And, of course, the format of the story is great as we have Thea narrating the story plus the written chapters provided by Maria all concluded with delicious sounding recipes with very amusing titles.

On top of this – who can you actually trust?  Well, you’ll have to read this to find out because wild horses couldn’t drag spoilers out of me.  There’s more going on here than originally meets the eye and the author drew me down the garden path into a totally wrong feeling of knowing what was going on – which I appreciate totally.

A twisted family story and a mystery with two women both desperate to succeed.

I listened to an audio version which I heartily recommend.

I received an audio copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 4.5 of 5 stars