Comfort Food

From Barnes & Noble

"Gus Simpson adored birthday cake. Chocolate, coconut, lemon, strawberry, vanilla -- she had a particular fondness for the classics. Even though she experimented with new flavors and frostings, drizzlings with syrups and artfully arranging hibiscus petals. Gus more often took the retro route with piped-on flowers or a flash of candy sprinkles across the iced top. Because birthday cake was really about nostalgia, she knew, about reaching in and using the senses to remember one perfect childhood moment." The first words of Kate Jacobs's novel establish the power of food to evoke memories and bring people together. But Comfort Food isn't all sugary icing. As Cooking Channel star Augusta "Gus" Simpson contemplates her fast-approaching 50th birthday, she realizes that she faces scary risks in her plans to rejuvenate her life. A smoothly themed follow-up to The Friday Night Knitting Club.

Marie Claire

Without resorting to stereotypical personalities or over-the-top plot twists . . . Jacobs does something unexpected—she changes things up, and [Club] goes from being a good book to being a really great story.

Publishers Weekly

Jacobs follows The Friday Night Knitting Club with another multigenerational tale, this time on the foodie circuit. Popular Cooking with Gusto! host Augusta "Gus" Simpson, a widowed mother of two adult daughters who's about to turn 50, is tiring of her many obligations, which include throwing an annual birthday bash for herself. That trial pales, however, in comparison with the introduction of saucy former beauty queen and YouTube star Carmen Vega as Gus's cohost: Carmen is younger, hotter and very tight with the boss. It's soon apparent on the set that this new situation isn't working, so the two are packed off, along with a forgettable cast of secondaries, to a corporate team-building weekend, complete with New Age guide. When the resort's head chef calls in sick, a team-building opportunity presents itself. Jacobs gives Gus a reasonable love interest and provides the requisite bickering and backstabbing, but the foodie moments lack passion, and the results yield no stars. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Library Journal

Jacobs's cheery followup to the bestselling Friday Night Knitting Club(soon to be a feature film starring Julia Roberts) is another multigenerational tale with broad appeal, one tracking the personal and professional tribulations of a popular celebrity chef and her two twentysomething daughters. While the secondary story lines are at times a bit thin, Barbara Rosenblat's (www.barbararosenblat.com) ebullient narration and the string of happy endings make this a good choice for popular collections. [With tracks every three minutes for bookmarking; also recorded by Penguin Audio. 9 CDs. unabridged. 10 hrs. ISBN 9780143143161
—Beth Farrell

Kirkus Reviews

The lives and loves of a TV chef, her daughters, neighbor and associates all receive a makeover in this lighthearted but sometimes sagging romantic problem-solver. Jacobs (The Friday Night Knitting Club, 2007) turns to the subject of food on television. Widowed control-freak and mother of two Gus Simpson, approaching 50, has been a star of the CookingChannel for 12 years with her show Cooking with Gusto! But now, under pressure to improve her drooping ratings, she finds herself sharing a new program-Eat Drink and Be-filmed in her own kitchen, with pushy Carmen Vega, a ruthlessly ambitious ex-Miss Spain. Helping out on the live program are Gus's adult daughters Sabrina and Aimee, her neighbor Hannah (a reclusive journalist with a disgraced sporting past), one of Sabrina's ex-boyfriends and Oliver, the show's attractive producer. In a rather slack middle section, the story gets diverted down multiple paths, involving career, family, finance and relationships, while dodging from one mini-crisis or set piece to the next: a kitchen fire, a teambuilding weekend, a bride with extreme wedding nerves. But late in the day, Jacobs marshals her occasionally tepid characters, cuts back on the life philosophy, connects various predictable dots (and one or two less predictable ones) and delivers a slew of happy endings. Not quite as satisfying as the title would lead us to expect. Agent: Dorian Karchmar/William Morris Agency