How to Share an Egg A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty by Bonny Reichert

Publisher: Ballantine Books

On Sale Date:  January 21, 2025

Pages: 304

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

In this moving culinary memoir, chef, and award-winning  culinary journalist Bonny Reichert describes the past of her  restaurant-owner father, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps and immigrated to Canada after the war ,and how his past formed her life.  For a long time, Bonny avoided everything that had to do with the holocaust, she knew her father's stories, but this changed after a travel with her family and her father to Warsaw, where he grew up in the ghetto, and where Bonny tasted the perfect bowl of borscht, and her journey to uncover her culinary roots. She takes the reader on this journey with her in many moments in her life; from her childhood, where she grew up around the restaurants of her father, about her beloved grandmother Baba Sarah who was always to be found in the kitchen, cooking the most delicious  food, from her first marriage that fell apart soon, becoming a mother, her new marriage, becoming a chef and culinary journalist, and her life changing travels to Poland, and mostly, the love for her father, who plays an important part in this book and in her life. The book takes you to many places and times in her life, and it is a very moving and beatifully written journey.

It is the story of the daughter of a holocaust survivor, and it is moving but also sad to read how the intergenerational trauma of this can span over multiple generations, altough her father never gave up, Bonny took years to gave his past a place in her life, and did this also by writing this book with her father, who had to survive the gruel horrific concentration camp with very little food, his experience with real harsh hunger and survival, you can only have deep respect for him, as he started a restaurant business out of nothing as a new immigrant in Canada after the war.

The love for food is also a red line in the book, she grew up with Polish food and over the years, learned how to make the food of her roots herself and became a chef. I truly learned a lot from this book, about historical facts and about some cultural aspects as well. I found this book very moving, entertaining, and above all, beautiful written! This is a book I recommend reading if you love books about food and history, in this book these two are perfectly combined and this is what make this book taste really good!

New book reviews are coming up!

The past few weeks there where no new book reviews on my blog; I had the flu, and because I am also a Gitelman Syndrome patient, I had to take as much rest as possible to recover.

However, next week I hope to post a new book review, as I just started reading again. The first review up will be How To Share an Egg by Bonny Reichert.

Takeaway: Stories From A Childhood Behind The Counter by Angela Hui

 

Publisher: Trapeze

On Sale Date:  January 7, 2022

Pages: 352

This is a review of a book that I bought

Angela Hui's parents moved from Hong Kong to the UK in 1985, and started the Lucky Star Chinese takeaway in the small Valley town of Beddau, Wales in 1988. Angela and her two brothers grew up in the takeaway, as they lived above the shop. Her parents where always working hard in the kitchen of the takeaway. Angela describes in this book how she experienced growing up in a takeaway. It means always being in the takeaway after school and helping manning the counter since she was twelve years old. Manning the counter and the till and dealing with customers can be quite demanding, an in a Chinese takeaway, the family also has to deal with many racist incidents in a small town as Beddau. Her parents never really learned English very well, so Angela also has to support them with translating imporant letters. Angela's parents are very kind and loving, but the work in the takeaway means they rarely have any family quality time, only during the summer vacation to Hong Kong and on trips to the wholesale to shop for supplies and ingredients for the takeaway. Her dad is also not easy, as he has a serious gambling problem and lashes out verbally sometimes to his wife and children. 

Angela doesn't shy away to name the difficulties the family has faced, which makes the book really an honest memoir, and it is a book you can't put away once you started reading.  One of the most sad racist incidents was when boys break in into the garden where Angela's mom has her garden where she had grown melon's with care. The melons are stolen and smashed, and I truly put myself in her mom shoes to feel her sadness about this, it was so heartbreaking. There where fun moments too, and the book is filled in between chapters with the most delicous recipes from the takeaway, like spring rolls and prawn toast. Because of the hard work, the three Hui children get to study and fly out and started there own lifes, Angela describes when she had to leave the takeaway and move out to find her own path in life, and you can only have deep respect as a reader for the  hardworking  and honest Hui family, the parents retired after thirty years of running the shop, but this book truly is a dedication to the hard work of the families behind the Chinese takeaways in the UK. In the 1990's I once saw a British tv documentary (I think it was called Takeaway Lives or Children from the Chinese Takeaway) about the second generation of Chinese immigrants in the UK who run takeaways, and how they see their future. I still haven't found it online back yet, but this book truly reminded me of that documentary, as the people in it dealt with the same things I saw back in this book. I truly liked this book about and I highly recommend reading it!

The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

Publisher: Dutton

On Sale Date:  January 7, 2025

Pages: 352

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

1936; Charlotte Cross is a student in New York City, who gets an offer of a much desired spot on an archeological digging site in Egypt's ancient Valley of The Kings. She accepts the offer, and during the time at the valley, she stumbles on an ancient found. And she gets in a relationship with Henry, and they get a daughter, Layla. But later on, tragedy strikes when World War Two is on the brink of breaking out, and Charlotte, Henry and their baby Layla have to flee back to New York by a ship, a ship that lands in terrible weather  and that slays Henry and Layla overboard..  

Heartbroken Charlotte's live is never the same, and back in New York she is hospitalized  in a psychatric hospital after her tloss and trauma, but she starts a new life and gets a job as an associate curator at New York's Metropoltan Museum of Art department of Egyptian Art, where she does research on Hathorkare; a female pharaoh overseen by most other Egyptologists as unimportant which she certainly wasn't.

New York 1978; Annie Jenkins gets to work for the former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who is in the middle of organzing the prestigious and famous Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.

The evening of the Gala, everything goes wrong; Annie is asked to pick up a box at the Museum of Natural History, presuming that the box contains life butterflies, as Diana really wanted butterflies at the gala. But instead, the box contains moths, which is devastating as the box opens and the costume and fashion exhibition, is swarmed by moths at the gala evening, and Annie gets the blame. To make matters worse, on the same evening in the midst of all the moths swarming around, the light falls out and One of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts , and ancient Egyptian Queen statue goes missing. Annie and Charlotte spot a man with an ankh necklace, who violently threatens them and then runs away. Charlotte discovers asuspicious lead to who might be behind this incident and wants to travel to Egypt, where the lead links to, also to find out if Henry and Layla are still alive, as their case never was really closed Still a suspect, Annie joins Charlotte on her travel to Egypt, and a journey full of danger begins..

Fiona Davis has written a new masterpiece again! Just like all her other books, The Stolen Queen takes places in a sigificant and famous New York City landmark building, this time the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And just like all her other books, the storyline and characters are both magnificent. The drama in the story  builds up slowly, and at first I thought this book probably was one with less drama and mystery then the previous books of Fiona Davis. But the storyline really takes off after the incidents during the Met Gala. I truly didn't see this coming and this surprise effect was truly good! The book travels back and forth during past, during Charlotte's time in Cairo in the 1930's to the present, where we meet Annie and Annie meets Charlotte. This really worked for the story, and I though that the story got better and better and more thrilling, especially in the final parts there where some major plot twists that where truly had a wow-effect. And the ending, it truly is good!

Overall, this is another fabulous book in the already long line of fabulous line of books by Fiona Davis. I absolutely enjoyed reading it and found it highly entertaining and thrilling, and I recommend it!!

Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

 

Publisher: Penguin UK

On Sale Date:  28 July 2022

Pages: 416

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

1882,China; Daiyu is twelve years old when her parents dissapear. She lives with her grandmother, who warns her that one day, the people who captured her parents, will come for her too. Her grandmother forces her to leave for the city of Zhifu, disguised with a shaved head as a boy named Feng. Now, Daiyu has to survive on her own.

She becomes a help for a calligraphy master, but shortly after she is kidnapped at the fish market, and after being held captive for a year where she is thaught English, she is smuggled in a crate and shipped to San Francisco, where she starts to live as a girl again, but that makes her land in the dangerous brother of Madame Lee, which by daytime is a laundry shop. Daiyu becomes the prostitute Peony here, and Madame Lee forces her to spend her first ''real work night'' with a man who is important in the most important tong (the Chinese mafia) that protects the brothel. This totally goes different as planned, and it lands Daiyu fleeing the brothel secretly and makes her land in a mining town of Pierce Idaho, where Daiyu, as many other Chinese, finds work in  a Chinese general store as a boy again, named Jacob Li, where she becomes good friends with the two owners.  But the Chinese are met with agressive and violent racist mobs who want the Chinese workers in quite verbal slur words ''to go back to their country'. This leads all to very tragic events, where Daiyu and her fellow workers at the store are accused of a murder they didn't commit..

This is a beautiful and tragic book that is truly moving. I found it sad to read in the afterword, that the racist events that took places in the book, truly happened in history.  How the book is written, it is absolutely breathtaking and beautiful. The author did a great job to make the events that took place in a different era, understandable and easy to follow as a reader. The characters where brilliant, and Daiyu is a true heroine. She has to undergo many hardships from early age on, and during the book you just get deep respect for her, as her hardships in life never seems to stop, but she never gives up. The end was truly one that gives you cold chills, I really found it scary, and I truly hoped Daiyu and her two friends would come out alive.. I truly found it heartbreaking how racist some people where against Chinese people, against the backdrop of the awful Chinese Exclusion Act, something I will never understand. I find books like this very important to show parts in history that are rarely or never told.

Overall, this is a very good and very original book, with an amazing storyline and characters that I highly recommend!

Clementine and Danny Save The World (and Each Other) by Livia Blackburne

 

Publisher:  Quill Tree Books

On Sale Date:  July 18, 2023

Pages: 336

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

Clementine Chan is a girl who knows everything about tea. Besides her school work and work for the school paper, and her college applications, she runs a popular blog where she reviews tea shops under the pen name Hibiscus. She has a loyal group of followers, except for follower BobaBoy888, who leaves critical and not so nice comments on her blog posts. Clementine learns that a local strip mall is to be destroyed, and that Kale corporations has bought it to build chain stores there, she joins the Chinatown Cares community movement to try to stop Kale corporations.

Danny Mok works in the Chinatown tea shop of his parents after school. Besides school, he comments frequently on the blog of Hibiscus (as BobaBoy888) to comment on every review she writes of tea shop He hates change, so when his parents announces that someone from Kale Corporations has visited them with interest to buy the shop from them for a large sum of money, he hates the idea of the tea shop where he spend most of his live being gone forever maybe soon.  He joins the Chinatown Cares community movement, to save the community they both love so much. 

Together they are going through Chinatown to make as much people as possible sign their petition to save the community and the local shops. Clementine and Danny become friends, and later on, more then just friends. But then Clementine finds out that Danny is BobaBoy888, and they find out that all there hard work for the Chinatown community seems to be for nothing....

This is such a cute and sweet read, with a very fierce community sense as a red line through the book. I loved the two characters of Clementine and Danny. They where kind and both very realisticly portrayed, and both are characters you immediately like and relate to as a reader.  I loved that they bonded, and fell in love in the end. The setting of the book, a Chinatown in a not further specified city (altough it felt like San Francisco's Chinatown). I loved the setting of Danny's parents tea shop, which has been there for decades, and seems to fall to prey to gentrification by the Kale Corporation. This also felt very realistic, as this is happening in many cities around the world, endangering mom and pop stores that truly serve the community.

I truly liked reading this entertaining YA novel with a fantastic and realistic storyline, and this is a book I truly recommend!!

Protecting Whitney; The memoir of her bodyguard by David Roberts

 

Publisher: Chicago Review Press

On Sale Date:  January 28, 2025

Pages: 256

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

David Roberts life changed when he was asked by the American Embassy in London to take care of the protection of a high profile American client. Not knowing beforehand who. Formerly, he worked for diplomats and other high profile clients. He never really heard about Whitney Houston, but he became her bodyguard from 1988 on,  for Houston's UK leg of Whitney Houston's The Moment of Truth world tour. He saw there soon enough that Whitney's own protection and safety team wasn't organized that well, it was merely a chaos, in which he had to work to ensure a safety. For example, the house where Whitney and her entourage where planned to stay in during their UK leg of the tour was anything but safe, and her protection and safety team during the concert was also lacking, and was consisting mostly of strong looking man with no professional experience in their work field like David had. Because of David, Whitney's security improved, but the chaos where David's had to work in during these years with Whitney stayed, especially when Bobby Brown makes his noisy entrance in Whitney's life.

David describes vividly and in detail what he experienced during the years he worked for Whitney. Together with Whitney and her entourage, he traveled all over the world by plane, and through the US by a tour bus for many years. The most bizarre things and events happen. From protecting Whitney from stalkers who mysteriously made it to her hotel room, from strange and creepy fans at the first rows during a concert, till the entourage of Whitney he also has to deal with which goed not without problems, especially tensions arise between David and Whitneys creative producer Robyn Crawford, and Nippy Inc, the company of Whitney's father, and that many of the people around Whitney just used her as a money machine. From Bobby Brown and his crazy bizarre antics, who was being late for his wedding to Whitney , to the birth of  Whitney and Bobby's Bobby Kristina, till the tragic period where Whitney and her entourage starting to do heavy hard drugs, which got serious after the premiere of the movie The Bodyguard (loosely based on David's work as her bodyguard) which lead Whitney to overdose during the recording of her next movie, Waiting to Exhale in 1995, and her addiction that never stopped which resulted in her death in 2012. In 1995, David tried to help Whitney by reporting her severe addiction to her team, but her entourage and management turned a deaf ear and a blind eye for Whitney's addiction problems and sometimes even took part in it, even when Whitney wasn't able to sing anymore and concerts where cancelled, and David was resigned from his bodyguard duties because of daring to say anything about Whitney's drug problems, which was truly sad to read.

We all knew that Whitney Houston had many issues and problems in her private life. It was eye opening though to read how her bodyguard experienced all this, and how it was from his point of view to be in Whitney's life daily. To be honest, I thought after reading this book that Whitney's problems where even bigger and more intense than I initially thought. It was sad to read that Whitney's inner circle of people (friends, family, management and people who wanted to tag along on her successes) conditioned her use of hard drugs, and even tried to smuggle it in countries where there is a jail or death penalty on smuggling drugs, like when they traveled for concerts to Singapore. Sometimes my mouth fell open and truly thought in what reality without normal morals the people around Whitney lived in. For them, Whitney's voice was a cash machine, without any normal care for her health of mental wellbeing. 

David writes very entertaining, but keeps it all very realistic and honest, and doesn't scare away to name the ugly things in Whitney's life, which is truly good to read, he doesn't make things more pretty than they are, and I think if Whitney had more trustworthy people like him in her entourage (altough there where a few, like Aunt Bae), then maybe things wouldn't have downhill in such a tragic way for her. I truly liked reading this eye-opening and honest memoir by David Roberts, and I recommend reading it!

Brothers and Ghosts by Khuê Phạm

 

Publisher: Scribe

On Sale Date:  July 2, 2024

Pages: 272

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

Brothers and Ghosts is a novel about a thirty year old woman, Kiều, who lives in Berlin, Germany, is a journalist and has Vietnamese roots. She feels she lives between cultures, and likes she belongs to both and to neither one at the same time. She calls herself Kim in daily life because it is easier to pronounce in German society. She doesn't really know her family back in Vietnam as their parents rarely talk about it.This all changes when she gets a private facebook message from her uncle Sơn, who lives in California, and who tells her that his mother, the mother of Kiều's father too, is dying very soon. Kiều's father Minh and Sơn are brother's but became estranged when both took other sides in the war; Minh supported the Vietcong, while Sơn supported the Americans.

Together with her family, Kiều travels with her parents to California to prepare for the funeral. Meanwhile Kiều tells about the past of Minh and Sơn, about their past in Vietnam, and what moved them to settle in Germany and California, in her father's case on a  university scholarship to study in Berlin to become a doctor, where during that same time he met Kiều's mother. During his study, German students at his university,, news of the My Lai massacre radicalises Minh who joins a wider group of anti-war protestors, which is seen by fellow Vietnamese students, who report him and fellow student Hoa to the communist Vietnamese  authorities for anti-government actions. In the same years, Sơn fled to the United States after the fall of Saigon, where he settles in California's Little Saigon neighborhood and becomes a sucessfull business owner.

Kiều’s time in California with her own and estranged family makes her think over her ties to Vietnam and Vietnamese culture.

Brothers and Ghost is a short but very original and interesting book about a women who lives between two cultures and finding out about her parents past and who she is. The book is semi-autobiographical and loosely based on her own and her family's past. I really liked the storyline and the style of writing the author chose. I also liked that the story moved between the past and the present, and that you see the point of view of Kiều as well as her father's and uncle's point of view, and how their journey from Vietnam was for them during a time of war, and how they succeeded in their new home countries. The parts that took place in the present time, during Kiều's stay in California a bit thin, and I also though that the ending of the book was very abrubt. But further on, I liked every part of this book!

Blog Tour; The Memory Dress by Jade Beer

Publisher: Berkley

On Sale Date:  November 5 2024

Pages: 400

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

(this review contains spoilers)

Jayne lives in an apartment building in Bath, England in 2018. She only knows the single woman neighbour with two young daughters, as she walks their dog daily, as Jayne is a part time dog walker and florist. Further on, she lives a quiet life on her own. Until she meets her elderly neighbor Meredith, as her door is open one day and the dog she walks from the other neigbor runs into Merediths apartment. And this is how without knowing, Meredith and Jayne walks into each other's life. Meredith is suffering from dementia, and her apartment is one big and smelly mess that needs cleaning, notices Jayne. She also notices that Meredith is very lonely, and Meredith keeps on mentioning that her husband William is ''missing''. Slowly on, Jayne gains the trust of Meredith, and visits her as much as possible with a bouget of forget-me-nots. Jayne gets to know more about Meredith when she shows her her  messy ''memory room'' with contains many memories from her past. Jayne notices a beautiful ball gown draped carelessly on one of the chairs in Meredith's memory room, and by asking more about the dress, she learns that in a previous and better time, Meredith was the costume desinger of many of Princess Diana's dresses and outfits, back around 1988, where she met her future husband William in the workspace. But what happened to William, why is he missing? Meredith is sure of it he can come home every minute, and Jayne finds out Meredith had a daugher named Fiona once. Slowly on, she tries to figure out where William and Fiona are now, with taking Meredith on outings to places in London that played a part in Meredith's life with William. And Jayne is determined to trace down Fiona..

During the story, the neighbors in  the building get more connected and help each other, and a romance between Jayne and neighbor Jake starts too..

The Memory Dress is a beautiful book and also a very moving one. I really liked the style it was written in. The storyline was fantastic, it was easy to follow and it all felt very realistic. The characters in it could be your neighbors. I liked how at first the neighbors had no connection to each other, but because of Jayne and Meredith this completely changed for the better. Jayne is a character you immediately like as a reader. She is just always in to help someone. And so she helps the lonely Meredith, who suffered badly from dementia and needed care very bad. The story truly shows the sadness of dementia through Meredith. It was truly heartbreaking that from the start till the end she believed that William could arrive home anytime for dinner.  While Jayne knows, and as a reader you feel it, he will never come home again. But Jayne did a great job to make life a bit less lonely and more liveable for Meredith, without invading her privacy and in a very respectful way, altough Meredith at many times forgot who Jayne was and thought she was her estranged daughter Fiona. What I also liked was how the chapters changed from the past from 1988 till the present time to 2018, and you read Meredith's past which was linked to the dresses of Princess Diana. What I also really liked was the romance that bloomed up between her and Jake, that was really sweet!

The Memory Dress is a fantastic new book, with an amazingly strong and good storyline and an even awesome cast of main and side characters, I truly loved it!

The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu

 

Publisher: Celadon Books

On Sale Date: March 12, 2024

Pages: 320

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

In this moving memoir, Susan Lieu describes her own family's history, and the life after her beloved mother passed away after a tummy tuck operation by a malafide surgeon.

Susan takes the reader back to her family's history; after five failed attempts, they escaped by boat from post war Saigon, and landed in California in 1980. Susan's mother was the leader of the family, and on her own, she set up two very succesfull nail salons, where Susan and other family members who where brought over from Vietnam to the USA by her parents worked, a true family run business. Until that horrible day when Susan was eleven years old, and her mother's tummy tuck operation went horribly wrong, with a fatal ending. Susan was cross with her mother and told her she hated her, the next day, she was in coma she never came out of.

After that, what's left of Susan's family falls apart. Her father is a broken man after the death of his wife. But her family isn't that into talking about feelings, so they don't talk about her mother's death at all. But Susan is left with so many feelings, questions, intergenerational trauma and questions; why did her mother want to change her body?  Body image was important for her mother, the mother who demanded what Susan ate, but criticized her daughter's weight on the other hand too. The surgeon who performed the tummy tick was known to prey on Vietnamese women for patients, and advertised in papers read by the Vietnamese communities in the USA and he continued his malpractice altough he didn't have any malpractice insurance. Susan realizes that she never knew anything about her parent's past in Vietnam. Susan travels to Vietnam to learn more about who her mother was, and who she discovers, never truly knew. Susan is an artist, and she created a theatre show with the the loss of her mother as topic, to cope with it and as a mechanism to connect with her mother.

I found this a beautiful written and very moving memoir. My heart broke for Susan, whose life never was the same again after the sudden passing of her mother, and she had to deal with all these complex feelings, and find a road to healing on her own. A road with a lot of bumps, where Susan seeks inner peace in a questionable and money demanding yoga cult. I found it sad to read that her relationship with her father and sister was strained and complex, because they where not into talking about the death of her mother, which was so important for Susan's  grieving and healing process. Both a coming of age story and a research for her mother's past life, this book is very moving, emotional, tragic but also inspiring. A book that will the fans of the memoir Crying in H-Mart will certainly like. This is a memoir I truly recommend!