What ingredients do you need to cure a broken heart? This soul-nourishing comfort read is for anyone who has loved and lost—and wants to love again.

Twenty-nine-year-old Momoko has been tragically dumped. She thought her boyfriend was her soulmate. She believed he was going to propose. Instead, he dumped her at a love hotel.

So Momoko does what many broken-hearted people do—she gets incredibly drunk. So drunk that she passes out in an empty cafe. When she awakens, she’s eager to tell her story to anyone who will listen, and pours her heart out to a curious manager and the sole other customer in the cafe, a Buddhist monk-in-training. As she describes how she doted on her ex and how he loved her cooking, the manager decides to indulge her, allowing her to slip into the kitchen and cook up her former beau’s favorite dish: a warm, delightful butter chicken curry.

As Momoko finishes telling her story, she realizes this combination of cooking and sharing has stopped the flow of her constant tears. And the manager has a brilliant idea.

What if they started doing this regularly, inviting in patrons to share stories about heartbreak, while cooking a dish that held significance in their relationship? Thus, an unconventional therapy group, the “Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee,” is born.

Based on the author’s viral heartbreak story, this is a charming novel (with recipes) about a woman who uses the power of a warm meal to bring together the fellow lonely hearts in this small suburb of Tokyo.