My thoughts:
#DidntYouUsetoBeQueenieB#NetGalley
Anyone who enjoys watching shows about food and chefs (there are so many!) will want to give this food and chef based story a look. It features two people who come together because of their cooking. Find out what brought them together and how each helps the other while also learning the characters’ back stories.
Readers will want the best for these two!
Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for this title. All thoughts are my own.
Pub date: 15 April 2025
From the publisher:
Description
For everyone who loved The Bear! An utterly winning, crowd-pleaser of a novel about a disgraced celebrity chef, her striving protégé, and their path through the kitchen to redemption.
Regina Benuzzi is Queenie B—a culinary goddess with Michelin Star restaurants, a bestselling cookbook empire, and multimillion-dollar TV deals. It doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous and curvaceous, with cascading black hair and signature red lips.
She had it all. Until she didn’t.
After an epic fall from grace, Queenie B vanishes from the public eye, giving up everything: her husband, her son, and the fame that she’d fought to achieve. Her shows are in rerun, her restaurants still popular, but her disappearance remains a mystery to her legions of fans.
Local line cook Gale Carmichael also knows a thing or two about disaster. Newly sober and struggling, Gale’s future dreams don’t hold space for culinary stardom; only earning enough to get by. Broke at the end of the week, he finds himself at a local soup kitchen in one of the roughest parts of New Haven, Connecticut. But Gale quickly realizes that the food coming out of the kitchen is not your standard free meal—it is delicious and prepared with gourmet flair.
Gale doesn’t recognize Regina, the soup kitchen’s cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It’s been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale’s talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.
Teaching Gale, Regina’s passion to create is reignited, and they both glimpse a shot at the redemption that had always seemed out of reach. When Gale is chosen to compete on the hit cooking show, Cut!, it’s a turning point for them both.
It’s Gale’s time to shine. And that means Queenie B might just have to come out of hiding…
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Charming…DeFino skillfully weaves Gale’s and Regina’s stories, revealing how both have sabotaged themselves out of a fear of losing control. It’s an immersive tour through the highs and lows of a chef’s life.” — Publishers Weekly
Joyce's mystery and fiction book reviews with some non-fiction too! 