Comfort Food | 
 enlarge | Author: Kate Jacobs
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $9.95
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 31902
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0399154655
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780739496404
ASIN: 0399154655
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new.
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Product Description
In this smart, delicious novel by the bestselling author of The Friday Night Knitting Club, a celebrity chef shows her friends and family the joy of fulfillment and manages to spice up her own life at the same time.
Shortly before turning the big 5-0, boisterous party planner and Cooking with Gusto! personality Augusta Gus Simpson finds herself planning a birthday party shed rather nother own. Shes getting tired of being the hostess, the mother hen, the woman who has to plan her own birthday party. What she needs is time on her own with enough distance to give her loved ones the ingredients to put together successful lives without her.
Assisted by a handsome up-and-coming chef, Oliver, Gus invites a select group to take an on-air cooking class. But instead of just preaching to the foodie masses, she will teach regular people how to make rich, sensuous mealsreal people making real food. Gus decides to bring a vibrant cast of friends and family on the program: Sabrina, her fickle daughter; Troy, Sabrinas ex-husband; Anna, Guss timid neighbor; and Carmen, Guss pompous and beautiful competitor at the Cooking Channel. And when she begins to have more than collegial feelings for her sous-chef, Gus realizes that she might be able to rejuvenate not just her professional life, but her personal life as well. . . .
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Decent second effort August 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Following The Friday Night Knitting Club (which is a really good read), this book comes as a slight disappointment. While the cooking show setting and the food-central focus of the book is entertaining at time, the book never seems to ascend beyond a superficial storyline or develop its characters fully. The author can write about food and cooking well, but something in this story seems to be missing. It's not a bad read, just not up to the level of her first effort.
 Not as Good as I Thought it Would Be August 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Comfort Food is a disappointing. After reading The Friday Night Knitting Club, which I enjoyed thoroughly, I realized after the first few chapters that I was not going to like Comfort Food as much. It chronicles the life of Gus Simpson as a celebrity cook on the Cooking Channel and her lessening popularity with viewers...the other characters are her family and one reclusive friend. Gus's revamped live cooking show is basically a train wreck. Carmen Vega, Gus's on-screen cooking rival chef, uses other people to her advantage. Meanwhile Gus's love life heats up but somehow I did not buy her romance with the new culinary producer/chef of the live cooking show. It was not a "delightful" read at all and I cannot recommend this book to others.
 A Snoozer. August 14, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Zzz... oh, I'm sorry, did you say something? I apologize -- I was put into a deep sleep by this latest book from Kate Jacobs. A great cure for insomnia!
I couldn't make it past 100 pages. Too much telling, not enough showing, and no clue where the book was going or why. If I read one more word about poor little Gus the TV star, who seems like a total unlikeable control freak, I was going to scream. Nothing happened, and I didn't really care if it did or not.
The inconsistencies really got to me, too... she doesn't own a cookbook but somehow has a copy of Julia Child's French Cooking Vol. II in her house, who doesn't wear a seatbelt even though her husband died in a horrific traffic accident... whatever.
This is going on my "will never finish" list.
I enjoyed it July 24, 2008
I haven't read Kate Jacobs' first novel (but now I will). The subject matter all appealed to me: food, reality TV, mothers and daughters, set in New York.
If you are interested in any of those topics, and enjoy an easy read without much profanity or sex, you'll find this book to be the perfect Comfort Food.
Very average! July 16, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Kate Jacob's "Comfort Food" revolved around Gus, a popular TV show host for the Cooking Channel. Despite that Gus's program was the longest running series on the channel, the number of viewers had gone down, and Gus' bosses begin to wonder if Gus is too old for the program. Gus, was afterall in her fifties. In order to spice up her series, Gus was paired with a former beauty pageant from Spain who will join her in her cooking show. Her working life was obviously not going well, and even her personal life was problematic. Gus' two adult daughters were complete opposite of one another. Aimee, an Economist, was serious, studious, and felt she was neglected due to the neediness of her younger sister, Sabrina. Sabrina had commitment problems and despite many engagements, she's still unmarried, and unable to commit to one person. To make her life worse, the producers decided to put her entire family, and a few others (including Sabrina's ex-boyfriend, Gus's friend who is a recluse).
This was an okay read for me. The pace of the book was a little slow for me, The book was fairly well-written, but unfortunately not very engaging and rather predictable too. It wasn't one of those books where you can't put down. If you are a huge fan of Kate Jacob, this may be for you. But if you are looking for a more interesting read, there are definitely better ones out there. Very average!
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