Pages

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Effie Olsen's Summer Special

A fun, delicious romcom about a down-on-her-luck chef who returns to her small Maine hometown and rekindles a relationship with an old friend. 

Second-chance romance, culinary culture, and a beautiful seaside setting sweetly combine in Effie Olsen’s Summer Special, a deliciously appetizing romcom by Rochelle Bilow (Ruby Spencer’s Whiskey Year).

 

Broke and without a backup plan, Effie Olsen--a single, 33-year-old, professional chef--loses her “dream job” in San Francisco. She packs up her “knife bag and a few chef’s coats” and returns, after 16-years, to her “absurdly small, insufferably chatty” hometown of Adler Isle, Maine. Effie takes refuge under the pretext of a summer visit with her father and her younger sister, a “Generation Z financial prodigy.”

 

Effie’s return reunites her with Ernie Callahan, her still-single, former high school BFF. Ernie works as a chef at “Brown Butter,” a “farm to table… Michelin-starred restaurant” operated by a sexist male head chef who offers Effie a job. With Effie and Ernie working under the same roof, the two easily fall into favor and rekindle a “bucket list” of planned field trips of watching sunsets, indulging in giant lobster rolls, and even salsa dancing.  Along the way of their making fun, new memories, a situation arises at the restaurant that calls professional integrity into question—might the dilemma impinge upon the old friends turning into lovers?

 

Bilow’s insider knowledge of the restaurant industry is a key ingredient that adds depth and authenticity to this spicy, richly satisfying story that blends the pleasures of true love with elements of self-discovery.

 

Effie Olsen’s Summer Special by Rochelle Bilow

Berkley, 18.00 paperback, 9780593547908, 384 pages

Publication Date: April 30, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (May 2, 2024), link HERE