"The Summer Kitchen," by Karen Weinreb

"The Summer Kitchen," by Karen Weinreb


In an instant, one woman’s perfect world is turned inside out

When Nora Banks goes to answer the doorbell very early one November 1st, she thinks it must be tardy trick-or-treaters. But it’s no Halloween prank—it’s the Feds, who have come to arrest her husband Evan for a white-collar crime. Nora’s enviable life in the eighteenth-century house she’d filled her days renovating to museum-quality perfection is upended.

In this of-the-moment story about the loss of wealth and social prominence, the private-school mothers in Nora’s exclusive community close ranks against her and her young sons. Only the boys’ nanny Beatriz stands by the family. To support her children, Nora is forced to take a job in the same bakery in which the mothers share coffee every morning. While tempted by the offer of an affair with one of their husbands, she reaches into reserves she didn’t know she had. Thwarting a malevolent wife intent on running her out of town, Nora launches a local business of her own, The Summer Kitchen Bakery-Café. Along the way, she changes the town, its characters, and her way of thinking about life, family, money, and romance.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It kept me interested right the way through.  It also shows that you can get so wrapped up in your own world, that nothing matters about what's going on around you, or how others perceive you.

It had a sort of Nanny Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada feel to it, in its own way.  It shows you how the rich think and feel and I laughed when Nora said she had only spent $1,600 on 40 aprons.........who in their right mind spends that amount of money on aprons, like its an everyday deal?

Stars out of 5 : 5 loved this book and loved Nora's strength in being at the top, falling to the bottom and crawling back up to the top again while keeping her integrity (although she nearly lost it) and her home and family.