The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books (December 20, 2011)
Goodreads Description
After the unexpected death of her parents, painfully shy and sheltered 26-year-old Ginny Selvaggio seeks comfort in cooking from family recipes. But the rich, peppery scent of her Nonna’s soup draws an unexpected visitor into the kitchen: the ghost of Nonna herself, dead for twenty years, who appears with a cryptic warning (“do no let her…”) before vanishing like steam from a cooling dish.
A haunted kitchen isn’t Ginny’s only challenge. Her domineering sister, Amanda, (aka “Demanda”) insists on selling their parents’ house, the only home Ginny has ever known. As she packs up her parents’ belongings, Ginny finds evidence of family secrets she isn’t sure how to unravel. She knows how to turn milk into cheese and cream into butter, but she doesn’t know why her mother hid a letter in the bedroom chimney, or the identity of the woman in her father’s photographs. The more she learns, the more she realizes the keys to these riddles lie with the dead, and there’s only one way to get answers: cook from dead people’s recipes, raise their ghosts, and ask them.
A haunted kitchen isn’t Ginny’s only challenge. Her domineering sister, Amanda, (aka “Demanda”) insists on selling their parents’ house, the only home Ginny has ever known. As she packs up her parents’ belongings, Ginny finds evidence of family secrets she isn’t sure how to unravel. She knows how to turn milk into cheese and cream into butter, but she doesn’t know why her mother hid a letter in the bedroom chimney, or the identity of the woman in her father’s photographs. The more she learns, the more she realizes the keys to these riddles lie with the dead, and there’s only one way to get answers: cook from dead people’s recipes, raise their ghosts, and ask them.
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Review:
Ginny is 26, loves to cook and also has Aspergers. She has been sheltered by her parents her whole life. When her parents die suddenly her sister, Amanda, wants to sell their home and have Ginny move in with her. Ginny is very frustrated with Amanda when she won't listen to what she wants to do.
Ginny functions much better with things in order, so she finds comfort in following recipes, one of which is her grandmother's Ribollita. After she prepares the dish, something strange happens...Ginny sees a ghost!
I don't want to give away too much so that's all you get...until you read it for yourself that is.
I love Ginny's character and the way she uses ingredients to cope. I also love that there are some DELICIOUS sounding recipes in the book that I would like to try out! The story kept my interest throughout while Ginny made new discoveries about her condition and things about her parents that she didn't know before.
5/5
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