Search by Michelle Huneven is an autobiographical novel ripe with personalities who have been chosen by their Universal Unitarian congregation in Altadena, California to select the new minister. Dana Potowski, a restaurant critic and food writer, came to the church after her mother's death and found peace in the gardens and fellowship among the worshippers. Now on the minister search committee, Dana sees how different age factions are influencing the search. Huneven gives readers a page-turning novel with a perfect mix of gossip and drama`-- and recipes. Readers will find themselves casting their own ballots for who should be hired. This is a novel not to be passed by as a selection for churchgoers. Search offers insight into human nature. Perfect for book discussions.

5 big unexpected stars
While the premise of this book called out to me, I wasn't sure if it would work in reality. But it did, even more than I expected.
I’ve been a member of two Episcopal churches that underwent searches for new ministers. It’s a fraught time, with lots of contrary opinions, not just the age division so obvious here.
The book is a memoir, written by a woman that actually spent two years in the seminary. At the time she’s asked to join the search committee, she was absent more than present on Sundays. As she wrote, “Once you miss a couple of Sundays, I’d found, it’s easy to keep skipping.”
I appreciated how much time the author spent rounding out the individuals on the committee, so I really felt I got to know them, their faults and strengths. That allowed me to get very invested in the search and how what people said they wanted didn’t always align with their actual choices.
I definitely related to Michelle. She initially tried to be the centrist in a field of polarized opposites. She put in the time, unlike some. When she formed an opinion, I was usually right there with her, having the same issues, especially when it related to Alanna and Jennie. Now bear in mind, I’m even older than Michelle, so I struggled with the rashness of the younger members of the committee. (It may also be that as the chair of my church’s finance committee, I truly understand how important the down and dirty things like finances and building maintenance are.) But I also understood the argument that younger members should have a minister that was closer to their age and they could all come along together.
While there’s a lot of drama here, it was also a deep book and touched on the different meanings of theology and religion. I loved the interviews and the questions and answers given. It made me think a lot about my own beliefs.
I highly recommend this to anyone interested in both character “dramas” and spiritual issues.
My thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Press for an advance copy of this book.

My homie Michelle Huneven seems to have written what could be an autobiographical book. The food! The reviews! The animals! All of it! Not cozy. Not light. No, the characters are archetypical, not in the Jungian sense, but as people the reader recognizes from having loved, hated or been driven crazy by. Hunevan knows her way around the food scene and the church scene in greater Los Angeles and knows how to spin a yarn. If 400 pp looks long, don't forget all those recipes. take up space.

This book is witty and entertaining, with a bonus of delicious recipes at the end of the book! What an unusual story, which is about a Unitarian congregation search committee chosen to elect a new Minister! Being a Christian, with my Denomination, where the Bishops chose the Pastors, this story was interesting and humorous at the same time! And a cookbook too! A good read!

Committees are not the most exciting topic for a novel, but Liane Moriarity’s bestseller made into a movie (“Nine Perfect Strangers”) has shown that mixing 8-10 people together for a limited time can provide interesting results.

Author Michelle Huneven builds the eight characters as members for this church pastoral search committee. Her character development is slightly uneven and unlike reality, there is an even mix of character types. The main character, Dana, weaves an interesting look behind the scenes of committee work. Dana is a thrice-published cookbook writer but is out of fresh ideas. She secretly hopes that her time on this Search Committee will yield fodder for a new book.

For those who don’t know, a Search Committee is a time-limited position while a church seeks a new pastor. In some religions, the individuals of the church decide who will become their pastor; it is not decided by a hierarchical administration. A new pastor is not assigned nor are they rotated after a certain number of years. This small group of people examine the church’s strengths and needs and then go through an extensive “job hunt” for the right candidate.

In this novel, the religion is Unitarian Universalists (UU) and the author uses her characters and the potential job candidates to portray a range of UU churches. Every UU church has a very unique presence, from type of worship to order of service to inclusion or exclusion of the religious texts, poetry, music, etc. “Search” is a window into another religion. I also found this an appealing psychological study of personality types, although a bit forced and stilted at times. As someone interested in other religions and who has participated in these types of committees, I found many of the details to ring true. The addition of a dozen recipes at the end of the book is an added bonus.

I've heard of Christian thrillers and Amish romances, but this was the first time I considered the possibility that "UU horror" could be a genre.

Here we have Dana Potowski, a food critic, writer, and one-time seminarian who finds herself chivvied (not unwillingly) onto her southern California UU congregation's newly formed search committee for a settled minister to replace their tired and retiring spiritual leader. Forgoing the usually recommended step of an intentional interim minister, the congregation believes it's healthy enough, stable enough, and sufficiently self-aware to hire a permanent clergyperson.

The committee is a near-perfect cross-section of the congregation with representatives from every adult decade of life, a broad range of ethnic backgrounds, an array of sexual orientations and preferences, and a diverse history of prior religious affiliation.

From the start, the committee is doomed. One member's parents bought that seat on the committee in the hopes of influencing the outcome. One member isn't even a member of the church. One is cowed by persuasive women and has a clinical inability to complete tasks. Another maintains warm professional distance and abhors problems that take longer than 10 weeks to resolve, one is gentle but dim and insensitive, and two are the old-school powerhouses that have long been used to running things. And, of course, our own Dana P. is secretly embarking on this search in hopes of gleaning a new book to fill the void in her professional career.

In every character, we see glimpses of fullness. The abrasive provocateur has iron-clad ethics around confidentiality. The anxiously inept bell-ringer who wants so badly to please everyone finally finds solid footing. The befuddled evangelical makes extraordinarily salient points about what it means to "welcome all." The dim septuagenarian caring for his matriarchal mother-in-law pleads for more mercy than the ravages of age have shown her.

But those glimpses don't amount to much. Dana would have to reflect too painfully on her own foibles to acknowledge the inherent worth and dignity of all her fellow committee members.

As I said at the beginning, this should qualify as "UU horror." UUs believe in ideals and believe that embodying those ideals will lead to an ideal outcome. But all congregations are filled with people. Imperfect, unideal, self-preserving people. The retiring minister has glowing merits and some major communication problems. (He shouldn't be the only one who knows about upcoming problems.) The search committee's covenant is written by one faction to quash another. (No one reads it.) Ageism, sexism, ableism, and racism are all decried and embraced in equal turn. (Words are valued more than actions.) And social media--never once mentioned--reigns sneakily supreme. Curated videos rank above actual accomplishment. Publicly performing the trendiest values supersedes living out one's faith. Star power trumps suitability.

Full disclosure: I'm in a UU church currently searching for an interim minister. I'm not on the search committee, but I am on the board, and every step noted in this book is close to home. We've talked about swapping packets and the matching process. We've had retreats and interim search guidance from the UUA. We've had cottage meetings, some hard lessons, and missteps that sent us back to the beginning of the process. The book is precisely, sometimes painfully accurate about the inner workings of the UU's complicated world. I dreaded every word of this book, and I might have nightmares for the next few months. You can find me feverishly reading Mary Oliver poems in front of the chalice.

My thanks to Penguin Press/Random House and Netgalley for the ARC. My thoughts and review are my own.

Search by Michelle Huneven was both what I expected and what I did not expect, as is often the case when I pick up a book by an author that is not familiar.

I knew what I signed up for, at least at a high level: a book about a group of people searching for a new minister. So far, so good. What I did not anticipate was how heavily steeped the book would be in church-speak and churchy subjects. The church in question is a Unitarian Universalist church which, I have to say from my own experience, is lighter-handed with the God stuff than the Catholic or even Episcopalian church (my wife and I were married by a UU minister. Cool guy, and no guilt or fire and brimstone). I guess I'm still sensitive to churchy books, though, because in spite of this being a UU story at its core, it still felt like a very churchy book.

That's not always the case with religious subjects. Take a book like Lamb by Christopher Moore: that book is at least indirectly about Jesus's youth ("...the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal...") but even so, that book was far less churchy than this one.

None of this is bad, by the way. The book is what it is, and I can't honestly picture how the story in Search could be told any way other than the way it was told. It just threw me a bit because I feel like I've read other books that involve religion without being quite so religious. That's on me, not the author.

Enough of my thoughts about churches and religion.

This book was very well written, the story flowed well, and the characters were unique enough and mixed enough to keep me engaged. The cast was very diverse, almost to the point of feeling forced, but I'm probably just used to reading books with less diversity. The story is witty as well with lots of funny interactions and conflicts between the characters, which I guess is the point of the story: wildly diverse viewpoints and age differences and attitudes coming together for a common cause. Who doesn't want that?

Do I recommend the book? If you're a church-goer, sure, you're probably the target audience. If you're a church-goer and a foodie, most definitely read this book. There's LOTS of food words here to fill you up. I'll probably explore MH's other books to get a better idea of how she writes. One book isn't enough to judge.

Thanks, NetGalley, for passing a copy of this book to me to read and review!

Who knew a novel about a 9-month search for the perfect minister could be so engrossing? The story is narrated by Dana, a member of the search committee tasked with finding a new minister for their Southern California Unitarian Universalist congregation. Having once attended divinity school and more recently worked as a food writer and restaurant critic, Dana is ready for a new challenge. But the committee includes a wide variety of church members, each with (not-so-)secret prejudices and preferences and eager to convince others in the group to agree with them.

I was fascinated by the details about each person on the committee, the search process and procedure, the wildly different prospective candidates for the job, and the politics within the group. As I read, I became more and more invested in the end result--would Dana and her closest cohorts prevail, or would the younger faction be triumphant--to the point where I agonized along with the characters and was emotionally affected by the conclusion.

It felt like the book was a memoir, when actually it is the fictional memoir written by the main character, who kept her intentions secret from her fellow members (but not from the reader). It also made me want to learn more about Unitarian Universalists, an interesting religion about which I knew nothing. Adding to the authenticity of the book, the author, like the protagonist, has a background in theology education and food writing.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press for allowing me to read and review this book.

This book surprised me. I didn’t expect to love it but I really did. Finding a new minister for a progressive church doesn’t sound riveting but it was a fantastic read and I couldn’t put it down at the end.

DNF. Story did not hold my interest. I’m sure others will enjoy it, but I just couldn’t get into the book.
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

What a wonderful surprise! It started out slowly and I wasn't sure whether it was going to grab me, but it did. I love this kind of novel so much -- when the description makes you think, "It's about... what?!?" -- and then the author so masterfully brings you along for a ride that you never would have thought you'd have undertaken.

Search
By: Michelle Huneven
Pub. date: April 26, 2022
Review date: October 24, 2021

Many thanks to Penguin Press & NetGalley for allowing me access to this arc in exchange for an honest review..
Search was an absolute Gem of a book. Searching for a new minister, this motley crew of parishioners, with their completely different personalities, make this one search crew I would Love to be on. The added recipes were an absolute delight . I give 4 stars to Search.
#Search #NetGalley

This sounds like it should be a total snoozer - a bunch of odd people on a committee looking for a new minister? BUT. I loved Jamesland so, so much that I will read anything Michelle Huneven writes and guess what? this one was awesome. I can't even tell you why, exactly, except that her writings about faith and personalities and just the structure of the book in general (fictional memoir, with recipes) was perfect. I'm not religious, at all, but I looked up the closest UU church and am planning on checking it out. Sounds crazy, but gosh this novel did a great job of describing souls and worship and community and now I need to see for myself. 5 stars

A great book! I am not a current parishioner but know about searching for clergy from my past. This brought humor and a bunch of characters that you can relate to in a fairly mundane process.
I will follow this author for sure.

Enjoyed from beginning to end a search for a church minister a subject I know little about.Fullof rich characters great dialogue and recipes.A really delicious book add in recipes so much fun will be following the author.#netgalley #search

autobiographical-fiction, recipes, cooking, humor, ministry, parish-life, religious-differences, relatives, relationships*****

Not sure what I expected, but this was great fun. So descriptive of a plethora of people and ideas. Some of this stuff just couldn't have been made up: the self medicating anesthesiologist who wanted her to meet him in the bathroom to the polyamorous individuals tho were thrilled to have her take them to a restaurant so she could critique the food (she is a food columnist), to the vagaries of extending a call and vetting a prospective new clergyperson. Both fun and enlightening. Loved it.
I requested and received a free ebook copy from PENGUIN GROUP/ The Penguin Press via NetGalley. Thank you!

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press/Random House! What a story! What started out a little slow for my taste has become a truly entertaining and emotional read for me. Even as I sit here writing this I am seething over the end. Actually, seething over the entire second half! The idea for this memoir about choosing a minister is so enjoyable and I am floored by how it has made me feel (and learning the ins and outs of this church wasn't bad either).

Dana P is a food writer who is asked to sit on a committee to choose the new minister for her AUUCC church. The other members of the committee are a helter skelter bunch that you know will just bring on the drama. And they did. They are all supposed to go through a very lengthy nominating process, choosing from a large selection of possible candidates, and I loved the whole thing. I can't believe the way some of these members acted, and I think what I loved most was that Dana acted and thought exactly as I would have. I was right there with her, experiencing it all. To top it off, we get a lovely description of the food she gets to eat, and I wanted to try all of it. It wasn't thrown in your face, or overdone. It was just right, even giving us the recipes at the end. Dana is a very well developed character, as were all of the committee members. You know them all, good and bad, by the end. I only wish the beginning had thrown me in a little quicker, you really need to get into the thick of it. But please do! A roller coaster of emotions and feelings is what I needed, and what I got to read.

Excellent novel -- once again, Michelle Huneven has produced a work about real lives and that resonates
with a reader.

I was fully drawn into the concept, the characters and setting - from the very beginning. As usual, she also forces
us to ask questions about our own lives and our choices as she takes along the path of the story.

I've been eagerly awaiting Huneven's next book -- and I was not disappointed.

Search by M. Huneven, published by Penguin Press/Random House, is written as memoir, containing recipes. And they're great, I tried them all.
Dana is a restaurant critic/ food writer and is settled in her life, her marriage to an attorney, her town, her church.
When she gets roped in the congregational search for a new minister I never dreamed it could be that highly entertaining, witty and fun with just the right amount of everything I love in a good book.
A complex story who never gets boring, funny and witty.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book.
I really struggled to get into this book, although the writing style is good and the author is very descriptive (I love being able to physically see a person or an object when I'm reading about it - it makes a change from guessing or imagining (which is equally as good)).
I found the plot line very slow, and repetitive in places. I'll admit I only made it to 14%
Maybe I needed to be in a different frame of mind to read this?
I am glad that I got the chance to try this book.
Happy reading.