How to Eat a Cupcake: A Novel

How to Eat a Cupcake by Meg DonohueSource: PurchaseRating: 4/5 starsWhen Annie Quintana was a senior in high school her mother Lucia died. In a cruel twist of fate, that same year Annie¡¦s best friend, Julia St. Clair turned on her, got her kicked out of her fancy prep school and nearly cost Annie her a chance to go to college. Ten years later Annie has built a good life for herself and has no desire to revisit her painful past. She is a master baker who has channeled her mother in the interceding years through her cooking. Though she never found her mother¡¦s original cookbook, Annie has been able to cobble together what she remembers of her mother¡¦s recipes to create the most scrumptious cupcakes. But as we all know, fate often has plans for us that we don¡¦t anticipate or desire.Here¡¦s what I liked:*Annie: she is just a delightful character who (like me!) has a tendency to resort to sarcasm and humor when she is nervous. I like that Annie, in a roundabout way, makes the decision (kind of) to confront her past and her ex-best friend, Julia St. Clair. Annie is never going to live the life she has earned without exorcising the demons that still haunt her.*Julia: I really didn¡¦t want to like Julia but as the plot begins to unfold liking her is pretty much inevitable. She may be rich, beautiful and successful but Julia has demons of her own that she is trying desperately to ignore. Reconnecting with Annie not only helps the two women heal their shared past wounds but also allows Julia to deal with her current demons and move on to the life she deserves.*The Mystery: Saying too much here would be spoilery and tacky so I will just say this: you kind of don¡¦t see this element coming at the beginning of the read and that is what makes it so intriguing.*The Cupcakes and the Cupcakery: The recipes and descriptions of how the cupcakes look, smell, and taste is one of the highlights of this read for me. The descriptions and the cupcakes are so rich and vivid that you can all but taste what Annie is baking. Thank God you can¡¦t gain weight from imagining yourself eating a cupcake º By the same taken, the cupcakery that Annie and Julia create together is magnificent. Again, the descriptions are spot on and are so well-worded that I could absolutely envision what Treat looks like. Plus, it¡¦s a place that smells like and sells nothing but goodness, how can this not be on the ¡§What I Liked¡¨ list?The Bottom Line: I can¡¦t honestly say I jumped for joy over the awesomeness of this read but I did truly enjoy it. It is a solid and well-written novel with endearing characters, a tiny bit of mystery, a tiny bit of romance, and a whole lot of feel-good moments. Also, it is a stand-alone so you won¡¦t have to worry about what came before and/or what comes next; everything is tied up neatly at the end. Enjoy!

Not what I expected, but I was more than pleasantly surprised.Ten years after high school, once best friends and pseudo-sisters reconnect. Annie is still smarting over the way Julia betrayed her as a teen, as well as the loss of her mother around the same time. Julia needs to FEEL something again, after a traumatic incident of her own, and what better way than to launch Annie into business as a way of making up for past misdeeds?There are men, including one who got in the way in the past, and does so again, temporarily again, though this time both women are older and wiser and not as easily fooled, but this books isn't really a romance. It's not light and fluffy as a cupcake (though the vivid descriptions made me incredibly hungry). There's a bit of mystery, even danger at the end, but it's not really about that, either.It's told alternately from Annie and Julia's points of view, and at first, I had a hard time liking either of them; Annie felt too brash and in your face, Julia too tightly controlled and deliberately oblivious. They grew on me, and in the end I was rooting for them to let each other in, as friend and confidant and business partner, and for their cupcakery, Treat, to succeed.

This is a really good story about two young women who grew up together. Julia was very rich and Annie was the daughter of the late nanny/cook who took care of Julia and cooked for her family. The family loved Annie and her mother and they sent Annie to the same very expensive private schools as Julia.When they started high school they began to drift apart and by the end of high school had become enemies, at least on Annie's part due to something Julia had done which had a huge impact on her life. Not long afterwards Annie's mother dies leaving Annie devastated.It is ten years later when the story begins. There are some twists and turns that result in them becoming partners in a cupcake bakery named Treat. There is really no doubt about how this book will end, but that is perfectly fine because this story is about the journey they take to get to that ending.Meg Donohue has written another book called All the Summer Girls and I enjoyed it immensely too. She is an excellent writer who creates fully fleshed characters that come alive whether they are the main characters or secondary characters.This book is highly recommended.

I purchased this based off of an Amazon recommendation after I had read a few of Liane Moriarty's books. I figured this was the same genre, so it might be just as entertaining.Not so. Very little character development of unlikable women, repetition (I'm going to go back and count how many times Lolly's voice "rasped") and heavy-handed foreshadowing of a very predictable secret made this a dull read. The "danger" mentioned in the blurbs for this book barely piqued my interest. There was no mystique or sinister energy other than what the author forces on the reader. No growing sense of unease as the reader picks up on things that don't seem quite right. Instead, through half of the book nothing seems amiss and then suddenly Julia is musing about how her parents' huge house has "always" made her feel a little apprehensive. And now she feels unsafe. Why? Where did this feeling come from? Why was nothing mentioned about this at all up until that point? Rather than showing and painting with words, Ms. Donahue tells us what to think. For the number of times Julia's mystery was mentioned she might as well have been shouting from the rooftops, "I have a secret! A secret, I say! Did you know I had a secret? Did I mention a secret?" And, by the way, it wasn't hard to guess the secret the first time it is mentioned.There was really no finesse to this writing at all. Does Ms. Donahue think "chick lit" has to be obtuse and boringly bland? I wouldn't recommend this and am not going to waste any more time on this author.

Very predictable plot

il libro parla di due amiche, di estrazione sociale molto diversa, che si incontrano dopo molti anni e che decidono di aprire una piccola pasticceria insieme.La trama del libro sarebbe finita qui, senonché i personaggi portano con loro un bagaglio con un passato pieno di misteri un po' forzati che con il tempo si ingigantiscono e creano ostacoli e complicazioni alla felicità di tutti.Piacevole nel complesso, ma nulla più di questo, e con una trama un po' banale, a metà tra il "kitchen book" che ultimamente pare molto in voga, e il mistery, del quale manca però la consistenza dell'intreccio.

I liked how the characters showed growth, and the general tone of optimism in the writing. Of course it had a happy ending but the story was engaging also.

In regelmäßigen Abständen lese ich solche Bücher in Englisch - um mich sprachlich einigermaßen fit zu halten. Aber dieses Buch ist es sogar Wert, auch in Deutsch gelesen zu werden: Wirklich packend, emotional und spannend! Ein tolles Buch - und ich habe es natürlich dann auch gleich an eine Freundin weiterempfohlen.

Fácil de leer, entretenido y divertido. La historia es bastante realista, aunque no deja de ser chic lit. Lo recomiendo.