The Cookbook Club by Beth Harbison

The Cookbook Club chronicles the evolution of three women who accidently meet as they are all braving different heartbreaks in their lives. They not only grow stronger but they become each other’s champions and emerge with strength, resilience and lasting friendships.

It all started when Trista Walker put an ad on instagram looking for people to come to her house and try cookbook recipes. The only catch was they must come with a cooked dish from a cookbook. Two women joined Trista that first night.

Margo, whose husband recently came home and after complaining about her cooking told Margo he was taking a job in San Francisco but without her. He wanted a divorce. Although she was not totally heartbroken that he had left her, Margo became depressed at the thought that she had wasted so many years of her life catering to a man who could not appreciate her. Plus the fact she had no idea what to do next in life as her world had revolved around him for so many years. Her one claim to fame was a cooking class on YouTube she had started to help her parents and their friends who all lived in a senior housing complex cook healthier meals. She had 35 subscribers. And her soon to be ex-husband had dropped a dilapidated farmhouse on her as part of their divorce settlement. She now needed to find someone to help fix the rundown eyesore up. Margo goes to the first Cookbook club meeting more for companionship than anything else.

Aja Alexander is self sufficient and able to take care of herself. Although young, she maintains a few jobs in order to keep her independence. She is in a relationship with a man named Michael who is from old money. Not quite sure how to categorize their relationship, as they have been dating for a while and she has yet to met his mother, whom Michael has told her is very overbearing. She sometimes feels as if she is walking on eggshells around him, always afraid she will say something wrong to anger him. Aja goes to the first Cookbook club meeting because lately she has been starving and this group sounds like a great place to eat.

Trista Walker worked at a prestigious law firm. Until she didn’t. Not sure what she wanted to do with her life next, when a bar she frequented for years goes up for sale, she decides to buy it and create a different type of restaurant. With so many ideas on the type of food she wants to create, she decides she wants people to taste her creations and give honest opinions. Thus the Cookbook club. What Trista does not realize is that it takes more than cooking ideas start a restaurant. It takes a great deal of money and loyal employees. Hopefully her dream will not be popped before the restaurant ever opens. The first Cookbook club meeting is at Trista’s house.

As each of their lives begin to unfold and change they not only lean on each other for assistance, but others, some who were in their pasts, some who will be in their futures forever, and some who just happen to come into a bar one night for a drink. But the Cookbook club women know one thing. No matter what, they will always be friends.

Their stories are not very similar, but have many things in common. The love they have for others, and each other, the strength they have to make difficult decisions, and of course the delicious food of their Cookbook club.