Book review for The Dead Husband Cookbook by Danielle Valentine. Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for my gifted ARC.

Okay, this book? Totally unhinged—in the best way. Danielle Valentine has written a story where Ina Garten meets Gone Girl with a sprinkle of Silence of the Lambs. If you’ve ever watched a cozy cooking show and thought, “Wow, I wonder what the secret ingredient is,” this book is here to ruin that curiosity for you.

We start with Thea Woods, an overworked, underappreciated book editor dangling by the last thread of her career. One career-killing scandal later, she’s offered the chance to edit the memoir of celebrity chef Maria Capello—known for her mouthwatering sauces, Martha Stewart energy, and oh yeah, the fact that her husband mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago and nobody ever found the body. Casual.

But this isn’t just any editing gig. Thea has to leave her life behind, travel to Maria’s creepy farmhouse, and read the memoir one chapter at a time like she’s on some twisted reading diet. No phone, no contact with the outside world, and she can’t even keep the manuscript with her. Not a red flag in sight, right?

The structure works. We get alternating chapters between Thea’s point of view and excerpts from Maria’s memoir, each ending with an actual recipe. The titles alone—like How to Serve a Husband and Braciole for the Betrayed—had me cackling. But the humor is layered with genuine tension. You laugh, but you’re also constantly looking over your shoulder. Or checking the expiration date on your ground beef.

Valentine is a master of the slow burn. For the first third of the book, not much happens, but the atmosphere thickens like a stew left on the stove too long. The tension simmers, the vibes get weirder, and by the time things start boiling over, you realize you’ve been sweating for 100 pages.

Maria herself is a deliciously ambiguous character. One moment she’s your grandmother offering you a biscotti, the next she’s deadpanning things like, “I’ve always said recipes are like family. Even the best ones are hiding something.” Ma’am, are you okay? (No. No, she is not.)

And Thea? I actually liked her, which isn’t always the case with thrillers. She’s frazzled, cynical, and too exhausted to question things that obviously need questioning—which, let’s be honest, is extremely relatable. She’s in over her head and too stubborn to back out. The tension between her growing suspicion and Maria’s perfect-host act is what makes this book work.

Is it a little ridiculous? Oh, for sure. There’s one twist involving Maria’s reason for choosing Thea that borders on soap opera. And the final few chapters are so packed with revelations it feels like the author hit the gas and didn’t stop. But I didn’t mind. The pacing may have lagged early on, but by the time we got to the meat of it (pun 100% intended), I was all in.

And that one line? That one bite of dialogue that won’t leave your brain:
“But even after the drink, I could still taste that meal… And something else, some indescribable, incredible taste that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Her secret ingredient, maybe.”
Yeah. I don’t want to eat ever again. Thanks for that.

There’s a campy energy to this story, but it’s intentional. It knows exactly what it is and leans into it. It’s a thriller with seasoning, with bite, and with just enough self-awareness to keep it fun. Think Verity meets The Menu, with a dash of What the hell did I just read?

Final verdict: wildly entertaining, deeply unsettling, and way too fun for a book about potential cannibalism.

Thank you to Net Galley and Danielle Valentine for an ARC of “The Dead Husband’s Cookbook”!

I was so excited to get to be an early reader of this novel. It checks off every single box for what I enjoy in a mystery thriller. The pacing is steady while we get to know Thea and follow along as she is unexpectedly chosen to be the editor of a memoir for a very famous celebrity chef she has admired since childhood. “The Dead Husband’s Cookbook” takes you on a thrilling ride of recipes (yes, real recipes!), suspense, plot twists and more. I absolutely could not put this down. At one point, I thought I had everything figured out but Danielle throws you for a loop you didn’t see coming!

Wow, what a fun twisty thriller! The highs were high, and kept me reading. The last 20% was a little too fast paced - answering all remaining questions. I wish some aspects had been woven into previous parts.

However, this is a book I’d strongly recommend if the title/subject/cover doesn’t gross you out too much!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Firstly, thank you Sourcebooks Landmark & Danielle for the arc!

What a ride! This book had me going from page 1. I thought the plot was fantastic, the book was so engaging and exciting. I loved all the characters and the roller coaster of emotions I literally felt for each of them at different times in the book. I'm not going to lie this book had me cringing at some parts and I questioned as to why I was still reading it. This is not for a negative reason, it was more of a "do I really want to actually know what is going on....will this scar me lol".
This book held me in its grasp until the very end, it was full of twists and "OMG" moments, I'm gonna pat myself on the back that I did figure some things out and I had strong feelings about others but that's totally ok. I enjoyed this book and will definitely recommend it.
It is a thriller, obviously, but there are definitely triggers that some people may not be into so double check that.

The Dead Husband Cookbook is darkly funny, surprisingly heartfelt, and unlike anything else out there. It’s a quirky blend of satire, grief, and recipes that somehow works perfectly. The humor is sharp and a little twisted, but underneath all the wit is a real exploration of love, loss, and moving on—just with a side of killer casseroles. It’s part cookbook, part emotional recovery guide, and part hilarious commentary on relationships. If you like your reads a little offbeat, with equal parts heart and humor (and maybe a pinch of revenge), this one’s a total treat.

Hahahaha, Danielle! what? the? fuuuuuuuuck?!?!? Is what I would text her if Danielle Valentine was my friend and had given me an early copy of this book to read. Then we would facetime and giggle together about how effortlessly funny and silly and rotten her brain is and how devastated I am that I read it too fast and can't read it again without knowing all the twists she got me with. Darn you, Dani! I would say, while still giggling about her sense of humor and what is wrong with me that I found this horribly dark book so hilarious. And then we'd roll our eyes at our husbands who walk through the room while we're chatting and look at us like "should I be worried?" and we'd jokingly say "hahaha of course not honey!" and then knowingly smirk at one another.

(Review will also be posted to Instagram on September 2nd - I will update link here when the post goes live)
3 ⭐️
This was a quick and easy to read thriller! There was tension and suspense which kept me interested in the story. I did guess the plot twists pretty early on as they were pretty blatantly hinted at, but I’m not upset about that.
The prologue immediately intrigued me and had me curious to keep reading but the story’s backbone felt familiar to another book I have read before (with the concept of a famous woman selecting a very specific random editor for her tell-all memoir) so it felt somewhat unoriginal. The biggest difference was the content in Maria’s memoir and the fact that this book was a thriller. I do think that readers who enjoyed the structure of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and are into thrillers will enjoy this though!
The author also added in recipes that were relevant to specific parts of Maria’s tell-all memoir which was creative! While that was fun, I wish there had been some witty humor added into the ingredients or the instructions, rather than just in the title. It made me think of the broadway show Waitress, and how I wished the recipes had been described with more emotion attached like in the show.
Overall, I thought it was a fun story but it was just okay for me. It wasn’t overly action packed, and some of the pacing slowed down in the middle of the book.

TROPES
Thriller
“Confessional” Memoir
Plot twists
Feminine Rage
Recipes included

THEMES
I enjoyed the messaging around the roles of men versus women in the household, and how men have less of a reason to stay in their family when things get hard. The stigma for women can be difficult to manage when the world assumes that a woman has to support their children.

THE CHARACTERS
For a shorter novel, I thought the characters were decently developed. Thea was a little bland but Maria had a lot of character development and a great backstory with her memoir.
I wanted a bit more from the side characters, like Issie (we never did figure out why she is still breastfeeding?), Jacob, and Amy.

*please note quotes are from an Advanced Readers Copy. Please refer to the final publication for official quotes*
QUOTES:

“I've always said recipes are like family. Even the best ones are hiding something.”

“Of course. It was what good mothers did, a magic trick. We swept the bad things under the rug and pretended everything was beautiful, that it took no effort whatsoever to make it that way.
There was nothing I wouldn't do to make the world perfect for my daughter.”

“There are reasons fairy tales always end right after the wedding. Before babies and a house in the suburbs, before the bills and the chores, kids complaining that they don't want to eat their breakfast or wear socks, a husband who snores and a wife who stops shaving her legs. Parents with health problems. Before life.”

“I woke the day after our fight expecting everything to look different. A sky full of clouds, the weather gray, maybe there'd be sleet. I expected every piece of fruit to be rotten, bread moldy, dust coating the surface all my furniture. Maybe that sounds dramatic but you must understand, it felt like my life as I had known it was over. Everything I'd trusted had been a lie. I wanted acknowledgment of that. I wanted the world to look like I felt.”

“But people like that expected mothers to be perfect. They would accept nothing less. Fathers were allowed to be complex, flawed, human. Fathers could make mistakes. Not mothers. Not me.”

“I always marveled at how priests would teach the story of Adam and Eve, how they'd try to get us to believe that women's punishment for original sin was pain.
What a laugh. Pain was never our curse. Our curse was that, no matter what happened, no matter if it destroyed us, if it killed our spirit, if it actually killed us, we would stay.”

Thea Wood's career as an editor was nearly finished until she was personally requested by famous chef, restauranteur and cookbook author Maria Capello. Maria was finally willing to tell the story of her husband Damien's "disappearance" thirty years earlier. Rumors of murder and cannibalism had swirled for years about the lack of a body. Was Maria's secret ingredient her husband's remains? This adult novel by YA author Danielle Vega (writing under the pseudonym Danielle Valentine) is both a book about family and loss. This unique story is told by both Thea and Maria at times. We are also privy a few chapters from Maria's memoir and some of her unusual recipes named after moments of her life such as "Roast Pork Shoulder (for when you catch your husband looking at another woman)" and "Tell Your Cheating Husband You're Pregnant Veal". This fascinating thriller is one you will want to devour in one sitting. #netgalley

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5 stars)
Deliciously dark, wickedly funny, and impossible to put down—The Dead Husband Cookbook is a sharp, satirical thriller that had me cackling one minute and gasping the next. Danielle Valentine delivers a bold, page-turning revenge story with bite (and a few killer recipes thrown in for good measure).

It’s Gone Girl meets Desperate Housewives, and I devoured every twisty, toxic morsel.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC—I’ll never look at dinner the same way again. 🍽️🖤

I too enjoy a little extra umami flavoring in my dishes. ;) After all, doesn't "every family ha[ve] their own secret ingredient"?

Wow!! I devoured this book SOO quickly. I just couldn't put it down. Thanks to Net Galley and Sourcebooks, I was able to read this page turner early and give you all the best cut (imo).

Are you a cook? Do you enjoy watching Ina work in her kitchen or flipping through glossy food photos in the latest Ottolenghi cookbook? Then this is the book for you! Maria and her husband Damien were madly in love with food and each other. So much so, they opened their own restaurant but what happens when you change a key ingredient? Whether that be in a recipe or in the magical elixir of love...

Murder, motherhood, secrets, meatballs made of people, and the cut throat world of publishing. This novel has it all and more. Sink your teeth into this juicy read, just watch out for the bones.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Dead Husbands Cookbook was a very exciting story. It is an easy and quick read with actual recipes sprinkled throughout. I loved the format of the book and honestly had no idea where the story was going!

Available August 5
Thank you Sourcebooks for this early review copy through NetGalley

This book was giving Julia Child meets "secret's in the sauce" from Fried Green Tomatoes. While I did see some of the twists coming, it still left me surprised in plenty of places. The setting was very atmospheric and the author did a great job of slowly building tension. Everything starts out feeling normal, but slowly things start getting creepier and creepier. This was a fun read!

(Note: video review will be posted to YouTube shorts and TikTok one month prior to publication. Will update with link upon posting)

This was a very good book. It was well-written. I would highly recommend this book. It's very easy to read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I really enjoyed the Dead Husband Cookbook. It kept me guessing throughout the story and I couldn’t put it down because I wanted another clue to figure it out!

This is a story about love and families and loyalties and honestly, just trying to survive in this world. And I just might have to try some of the recipes (although, probably not the meatballs!)

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I really enjoyed this book, I liked the format with the recipes mixed in (and kind of want to try making some of them now) and chapters from Maria’s memoir, and I liked the writing style.

It was fairly fast paced which was good. I do feel like it was a little longer than it needed to be sometimes but it wasn’t a slog or anything.

The most shocking thing to me in this book was learning that the author is the same one who wrote The Merciless. That said, I liked the ending and would have disliked the whole book more if it didn’t end the way it did.

Maria Capello a wife, mother, chef and tv personality has decided to finally write a memior however she has some strange conditions of her own. Thea Woods has been asked to be the editor for Maria's book and will only let Thea read the pages with her near by. Thea has to go to Woodstock, NY to stay at Maria's house for the weekend where Maria will only give her one chapter at a time to read. Upon her arrival Thea is asked to hand over her phone and soon Thea finds that the wifi will be shut off during certain times of the day. Staying at Maria's house is unnerving for Thea, who hears converstations in the hallways and really trusts no one at the house. Thea is being pressured by the publishing house to see if Maria will finally tell the truth about the fatal night where her husband disappeared thirty years ago. This book is full of receipes to go along with the chapters that Maria wrote for her memior. It also goes into the balance of working mothers feel when they are pulled in all sorts of directions. This book will have you staying up all night in order to finish it. I would like to thank both NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for letting me read an advanced copy of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the complimentary copy of The Dead Husbands Cookbook by Danielle Valentine.

The Dead Husbands Cookbook was a bit of an average read to me, I liked the premise but I just wasn’t a fan of the things that happened and the way they had played out. I didn’t mind the characters, I though Maria and her side of the family were enjoyable to read about but when it came to the reveals and the more thrilling aspects of the book I think they were just lacking something. I had only guessed one of the reveals near the end but none of the twist really had any of that “oh wow” kind of moment to them.

Overall I’m feeling pretty underwhelmed about The Dead Husbands Cookbook, it wasn’t a bad read necessarily, I did like the recipes included, they made for nice chapter breaks and the titles for them were kind of amusing. The mixed media kind of thing with the Reddit thread and Maria’s book were decent but I'm just not thrilled with this book.

Book review 📖

📜The Dead Husband Cookbook
✍️Danielle Valentine
📠Sourcebooks Landmark
📚Mystery/Thriller Fiction
🗓️Pub date: August 5, 2025

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

✨Thank you @NetGalley and @bookmarked for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

✨TV personality, restauranteur, and celebrity chef, Maria Capello, is the talk of the town for decades when her husband dies by suicide and there’s a conspiracy that she’s to blame. In fact, there’s whispers that she uses the meat from his bones as her secret ingredient in her other-worldly meatballs. She’s out to prove them wrong.

✨Choosing to only work with Thea Woods, a troubled editor on the brink of losing her job, Maria is set out to tell her story. Thea is whisked away upstate to join Maria at her rustic and sprawling farm. Cut off from the rest of the world, she is there to gather a story. Except things aren’t matching up.

✨Learning that others have gone mysteriously missing over the years, Thea dangerously digs to uncover secrets that Maria’s husband took with him to his grave, and the secret recipe that Maria is hell-bent on keeping quiet.

✨This was a unique read (albeit dark and disturbing), and I will preface this by saying if you are squeamish, you may want to reconsider. There were some parts difficult to get through (repeated mention of animal slaughter).
I am a huge fan of cooking and cookbooks, but add a thriller to the mix, and I’m sold. Danielle Valentine has a similar prose to Alice Feeney, Lucy Foley, and Lisa Unger so anyone who is a fan of theirs will totally eat this book right up (no pun 😏).


#netgalley #thedeadhusbandcookbook #daniellevalentine #sourcebooks #advancedreadercopy #arc #bookreview #bookstagrammer #bookstagram #summerreleases #thrillerfiction

I enjoyed this one. The character development was fantastic. The plot and pace kept me intrigued throughout. I spent the entire book going back and forth on whether or not Maria killed her husband, and was consistently surprised by the twists.

Fresh off an editing scandal, Thea is confused- but delighted- to find her cooking idol is not only requesting her to edit, but ONLY her to edit. Said idol, Maria Capello, is a celebrity chef whose husband went missing in 1996. Several spooky tales surround the Capello family, many of them with Maria as the role of murderess. When Thea accepts the job, she is hesitant to leave her husband and child behind to accompany Maria in her home. After receiving one chapter a night and witnessing some research plot holes, Thea does her own digging between the chapters and decides to come to her own conclusion. Honestly, yall- this book was riveting. It had so much going on, and surprised me with just how deeply it delved into the thriller genre. It is both character and plot heavy, and I was very excited to continue the story all the way through to the end. So many twists.! Thank you to the publisher and author for the eARC.