The Cookbook Club is an engaging book that is fun to read. Beth Harrison shares her love of cooking while she tells the story of three women who become friends as they navigate trying times.

Why I liked it:

This book was a quick read with an agreeable cast of characters. Each woman has a major issue or two to deal with in their lives, and while they don’t all handle every situation with perfect grace, they are not portrayed as weak or in need of saving. I love when characters save themselves and get by with a little help from their friends. I also appreciated that while there are a few romances sprinkled around, none of them become the prime focus of the story. This story is foremost about the power of female friendship.

What I would like to change:

Everything wrapped up pretty quickly at the end and I would have liked a little more detail. Even after going back over it a few times, I still don’t entirely understand what happened with Margo’s husband, and there was some unresolved tension left over from his visit to the house to take his things. I feel like there was more set-up to that relationship falling apart and the ending felt half-hearted. It was like we knew that they weren’t going to have any sort of reconciliation, so their story just ended abruptly.

This is a charming read by one of my favorite fiction authors. The Cookbook Club is a delightful women's fiction story of women friends that come together at a cross roads in each of their lives with a love for food and cooking at the heart of their friendships. I loved the writing, the charcters and that each woman is featured as a strong person in charge of her own life. Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity.. My review opinion is my own.

Three women come together at a cookbook club. Margo was just dumped by her husband , Aja is unexpectedly pregnant and not with the father . Trista left behind her law career and opened a bar. Each of the women face challenges they overcome together bonding over their love of food.

Fun women’s fiction read that is charming and delightful.

Thank you to Netgalley and Beth Harbison for my copy of The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food & Friendship for an honest review. Margo Everton sees an add for a cooking club and decides to join. Her selfish husband has just asked for a divorce and her world is upside down. Aja Alexander also joins, she is trying to hide a pregnancy and trying to figure a toxic relationship. Finally Trista Walker, formerly a high profile lawyer, buys a bar and embarks on a new career path. The ladies immediately bond. They are all at a crossroad in their life. They all need a friend(s) they all need some peace in their lives. This story is a great example of true friendship and how you can come together and make things better. The story was an enjoyable read, a four star read for me. I have recommended this to friends and family. I have shared my thoughts on my bookstagram page as well as reviewed on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The subtitle is a perfect description for the book, A Novel of Food and Friendship. Margo, Aja, and Trista are brought together by a plea on social media for people who love butter, aren't dieting, and won't skip dessert. As they meet together and make food for each other they grow a friendship that they all need.

I truly enjoyed this novel about female friendships! Three women, each at a crossroads in their life, form a friendship around a cookbook club that one of them starts. They bond over their recipes and help each other over their hurdles. Each woman has a different story to tell but all of them are taking their life in a different direction. The women were all relatable and I was rooting for each of them to find their happy ending. I loved the sisterhood these women created and the female empowerment the author cultivated throughout. The food aspect was a nice touch. I loved the tantalizing descriptions of food! It was hard to read this without reaching for a snack. The Cookbook Club was feel good and absolutely lovely! There was a lot more substance to this book than the authors previous work and I think it may be her best yet! My thanks to the publisher for the advance reader in exchange for my honest review. 4 ⭐️

OOOOH! I wanted to crawl into the pages of this book and become part of the Cookbook Club! This book was sweet and humorous. Filled with great friendships and fun food. I think I need to add this book to my book club line up!

Thank you so much NetGalley and William Morrow Paperbacks for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was an absolutely charming read. I enjoyed reading about these 3 women and their lives as they struggled to be on their own and accomplish the goals they set out to meet. These are women that I would call friends and it's hard to find books where you feel this way about 3 characters at once. The recipes and the meals they made for their club sounded so delicious that I am requesting 2 of the cookbooks frequently mentioned as a Christmas gift!

The Washington D.C. area

Margo loves to cook. In order to help her mother prepare healthy meals for her father who had had a heart attack, she started a small YouTube channel making videos of her preparing healthy food for him. It has helped her Mom and several of their friends have subscribed to it as well. Margo isn’t doing this for huge recognition but simply to keep her Dad healthy. In addition, Margo’s husband is a health nut and insists that she cook super healthy food for him. So, she does her best to accommodate his requests until one day he comes home to tell her he is moving to the West Coast and leaving her.

Trista was once an attorney, but now she runs a bar that she is working hard to make successful. As she loves to cook, she enjoys experimenting with different dishes that will entice her customers to try.

Aja has been dating Michael, a wealthy man. After a few months, she realizes that he is pretty much a jerk. When she asks to meet his mother, the woman comes off as aloof to her. But Aja does not put up with arrogant people. As she ends her relationship with Michael, she realizes that she is pregnant and also manages to get a job as a sort of gardener for Michael’s mother. Aja loves to try her hand at cooking but she loves to eat even more.

Via Trista, the three women meet up to form a type a Cookbook Club where they chose a cookbook and then made dishes from it and then they later meet to share the food.

There is much more to the story that intertwines the characters with others to make for more things happening in their lives. The author means for the book to be light-hearted with a few serious things thrown in. This works fairly well, but some of the things that happen found me rolling my eyes. I liked all of the characters, Margo especially, and I hope readers will enjoy the book. I do admit that as I also love to cook, I was intrigued by some of the recipes.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I enjoyed this book but it left a lot to be desired in terms of story arcs and characters.

I liked the idea of a cookbook club though there really is only one meeting that we "see" in this book. After that the three women are fast friends and confidants and the cookbook club is just a chapter divider to list some recipes and notes from Trista's "journal." That's a big jump for three people with trust issues.

After meeting a lot of secondary characters who rarely intersect, we jump right to a happy ending where they all are one big cohesive group. So much for those loose ends and unresolved plots. Just know they're all happy now. This really disappointed me.

This book did prompt me to buy the Deep Run Roots cookbook by Vivian Howard and make a recipe highlighted in the book, sage honey pork tenderloin, for dinner that night. However, with all the mentions of how much Margo loved her Dinah Shore cookbooks, not a single recipe was listed from that "cookbook club" meeting. I also think Margo should have been 53 and not 33 give her cultural references.

I was also glad the author included her hot sauce recipe because that was the most detailed dish of the book.

*I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher and I am required to disclose that in my review in compliance with federal law.*

This is totally my fault. I'm sure the book is absolutely wonderfu. I am really not a cook, so I put the book down after a few chapters. Sorry.

Such a cute and fun read! Perfect distraction in life right now. Really enjoyable characters and story and hard to put down! Such a fun idea too!

What a wonderful read should look like! This great tale of women sharing their interests....cooking and food....to become friends and family is one I could read over and over....and probably will.

In THE COOKBOOK CLUB, Beth Harbison introduces us to a group of individuals, each woman alone with her problems and floundering for solutions. She sets these individuals in a community of characters that will accept them into their midst and support them through their troubles. And we, as readers, get a beautifully wrought story of the group as they mature and become family. Harbison's writing is excellent. I'd not read of her titles prior to this but have already been trying to make up my mind on which to read first. The book includes a recipe section, so we can try some of the drool inducing dishes. This is a book that all of my book friends must read.

While I have loved Harbison previous books this one just didn't work for me. I love foodie fiction and when I saw the title and description I was super excited to read it. The main issue I had with this book was that I just did not like the characters. They felt weak and superficial to me. I didn't like their development or really their story arcs. There also seemed to be a lot of characters who popped in and then had nothing important to add to the story. Overall it was an interesting premise but it really didn't do anything for me.

This was a good book, but it could have been great, and that's disappointing. I feel a little cheated. With 4 different characters' perspectives you never get to fully "bond" with any of them. There were quite a few plot points that were never explained (so frustrating!!) and there was a whole lot of telling instead of showing. They formed a cookbook club but we only got to see them at the bookclub once or twice. After a bit it took a complete backseat to the story and we only got to see the notes about the food from each meeting. I expected the book (based on how the story was flowing) to be a lot longer so the epilogue took me by complete surprise.

When Margo's husband leaves her to move to San Francisco for a work promotion, one which he never even discussed with her, she goes into a funk. Part of which is brought on by her changing all aspects of her life including her cooking and eating style. At her lowest point she sees an advertisement for a club to read and try recipes that they share at a monthly meeting.

Trista a former lawyer turned bar owner is using the group to test run a menu upgrade for her bar. Aja rounds out the group. She is a single yoga instructor with a huge Appetite who can not cook.

These ladies quickly form friendships that help each cope with life's curveballs. I love when women solve their own problems. A good love story is ok when I am in the mood but strong women overcoming problems helps bolster my attitude whenever I read about them. I believe these stories also put the notion that women cannot be friends to rest.

This is a well thought out story line with relatable characters. So much so I log for a cookbook club of my own.

This was such a sweet story. I love women’s fiction, women supporting women, and impromptu love stories. This had it all and food! Margo, Aja, Trista, and a surprise member at the end, really showed what it’s like to be successful women, women in the middle of career changes, women who are starting over, and the scariness of depending on people that you have only just met. These women became fast friends, because when you know, you know! It really made me miss my cookbook club! Highly recommend for a quick uplifting read!

This book is yet another reason I adore this author! The story is about 3 very different women who without their collective love of food might never have otherwise connected. Each one is at a crossroads having seemingly lost it all. Margo has lost a marriage, that in truth was not much of a marriage at all for he was a colossal vapid narcissist. He never deserved her and when he left, he left her a money pit of a piece of property while laughing his obnoxious butt off. He is the reason women want revenge on their exes!! Trista lost her high powered law career and was ready for the next chapter that included reopening a bar/restaurant and the Aja was a timid, shy woman who had little to no self worth as she was reminded daily by her wealthy jerk of a boyfriend that she wasn’t worthy, who was all about him and never accepted any form of responsibility or anything that required him to be an adult. Trista puts out a call for for others to form a cookbook club so she can test recipes for her new restaurant. And so begins the journey of strangers to friends to wonderful support system as they each learn to love themselves and move forward towards better, happier and more fulfilled lives. A fun, lovely heartfelt sweet funny read.

I loved this book! The characters were going through different struggles in their lives, but through friendship, hard work, and learning to trust again, they changed their lives. The only thing I would have liked better was for there to be more resolution of what came next. I know that sometimes authors leave it to your imagination, but I really enjoyed the development of each of the women in this book and would have liked there to be more written about what happened next. Great read, though.

Margo got dumped by her husband, Aja got dumped by her boyfriend and Trista got dumped by her employer. All three make a new start in life based in part on the friendship they develop through a cooking club--a club that starts about the same time as the dumping.

Usually I enjoy books about women re-inventing themselves and reaching out to do the things they want to do. However, for whatever reason I never really connected with any of the main characters in this book. I just found them strange. When Margo is dumped, she realizes she has no real friends--her social life revolved around the wives of her husband's co-workers, and a book club. So, what does she do? She answers an ad for a cookbook club and in doing so, meets the only other two members of the club--Aja and Trista.

Aja goes with her boyfriend to meet his mother--and ends up getting hired as her gardener. Oh, and just after the boyfriend dumps her, she realizes she is pregnant. Trista is running a restaurant and as noted above, has a rat problem. However, despite reading the book, I couldn't tell you anything about any of these women except that they love to cook (at least Margo and Trista do, I'm not sure about Aja).

While the food they cooked sounded awesome, I found the book rather mediocre.

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley. Grade: B-