Parker’s Pages: Recipe for a Charmed Life

My favorite thing to do on these rainy December evenings is curl up in my warm, fluffy chair, pour a cup of tea, and get to reading a romance novel.

I got into this habit of late-night romance reads coming out of my MFA program in Creative Writing. My head was so full of academic texts and high-brow poetry that the only thing I could stomach in the months following was something easy and quick. Romance novels were my answer, and I’ve been chugging away at my stacks of them for a while now. When I saw Recipe for a Charmed Life on the shelf at my local bookstore, tucked away in the Romance section, I had a feeling that it would be a good one.

Recipe for a Charmed Life by Rachel Linden made for a perfect evening, and I can’t recommend it enough. If you are looking for something fun and easy to get in to, this is the book for you! Whether describing a perfect Parisian dish or the green-blue water of the Sound, Linden has descriptions to die for, and a perfect grasp of pacing. And as if that wasn’t amazing enough, her characters are likable, with strong convictions that propel them forward in satisfying (and sometimes tense) ways.

Georgia May is our protagonist, an aspiring Parisian chef from Texas, a girl with expert cooking skills and keen taste buds. Her dreams of being head chef are within reach; that is, until she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her with the pastry chef and she embarrasses him in front of all of Paris. We join Georgia on her journey to rediscover her spark and her sense of taste—in food and in men. She is lovable, direct, and honest. I found myself rooting for her right away, and although this is a romance novel, our focus is on Georgia May becoming the best version of herself, and I loved that our author didn’t let the romance outshine her growth.

This novel was an absolute delight to read. Linden has a strong voice, and I was particularly dazzled by her use of magic throughout the book. Often, romance novels can be pretty cut and dry—protagonist meets love interest in a cute twist of fate, they fall in love after two hundred pages, they separate after some big miscommunication but find their way back to each other in the end, and that’s that.

Rachel Linden, local author

But Linden puts a new ingredient into the mix, a hint of something magical. Georgia isn’t just a good chef (her sense of taste is quite literally perfect) but in the wake of her world getting turned upside down, her sense of taste disappears entirely, leaving everything tasting bitter, or of nothing at all. I loved this manifestation of Georgia’s distress. She feels bitter about life, so everything she tastes is bitter.

Not only does Linden play with this magical sense of taste, but there are also a lot of interesting musings about luck and coincidence. More than once our protagonist seems saved by lady luck herself, but rather than wave these off as some ‘movie magic,’ we are given the idea that luck has some real power in Georgia May’s little world. I thought that these little (and sometimes big) touches of magic really elevated this novel, and I found myself eagerly flipping through the pages to find out more about Georgia May and her love interest, Cole, who I also found myself adoring (oh, and did I mention that Cole is an oyster farmer in the PNW?).

In my writing about these books, I always teeter on the edge of just how much I should share, and while I’m dying to tell you how the story ends, I think you’ll just have to read this one yourself to find out! I’m also excited to share that if you enjoy this story as much as I did, Rachel Linden has a whole collection of novels set in this world of magic and food—one of which, The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake, is set to debut in 2025.

Happy reading!