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minimicropup's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
I. Loved. This. But it wasn’t satisfying, the texture was strange, and it left a weird aftertaste…I want more, where can I find more?
Energy: Evasive. Addictive. Vulnerable.
Scene: 🇬🇧 Set in Oxford, UK, in a newly developed neighbourhood
Perspective: We follow a cookbook editor nicknamed Piglet as they settle in with their soon-to-be spouse in the months leading up to their wedding.
🐕 Howls: Moments of ambiguous dialogue where we need to know who is talking, it impacts the story!
🐩 Tail Wags: The writing style. The dialogue (mostly) & characters. The feels and foods. Using ambiguity and withholding as the primary plot device. Piglet being frustratingly horrifying, but loveable. The nuanced juxtaposition of greed and entitlement vs love and fulfilment.
🤔 Random Thoughts:
Half the time I didn’t know what was going on. How does a book that bases everything on ambiguity and withholding not annoy me?
----
🎬 Tale-Telling: Dialogue-driven. Mostly show, not tell.
🤓 Reader Role: Invisible, standing in the room, picking up what others are putting down and tying it all together.
🗺️ World-Building: Energy driven. The physical settings are minimal. The ambience comes from the characters interacting with each other and their environment.
🔥 Fuel: What happened to make Piglet feel so differently about her partner and friends leading up to her wedding? Is she ruining her life? Will she go ahead with the wedding? Will she stand up to others? Will she stand up for herself? Should she?
📖 Cred: Open to reader interpretation with sprinklings of everything from hyper-realism to bizarro nonsensical
🚙 Journey: A dream that feels all too real.
Mood Reading Match-Up:
-Backyard barbeque. Sizzling stir fry. Kettle boiling. Knife chopping. Pots and pans. Caramelized onions. Bitter perfume. October breeze. Fall colours, crunching leaves. River water. Food truck rumblings. Tourists in the park. Hamburgers. Seams ripping. Sickening sweetness.
-Ambiguous plot mostly vibes bizarro realism
-Literary should-I-stay-or-should-I-go romantic suspense
Content Heads-Up: Body shaming, fatphobia (character comments). Pregnancy. Vomit. Eating disorder (starvation, restricting food, binging). Betrayal.Unhealthy relationship. Alcohol use.
Rep: Lesbian. Heterosexual. Cisgender. Fat. Same-sex parenting. Ambiguously described characters.
📚 Format: Kobo
🤩 Potential Fav of 2024
My musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming and Eating disorder
Moderate: Fatphobia
Minor: Pregnancy, Vomit, and Alcohol
tashtasher's review against another edition
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Infidelity, Classism, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Body shaming, Pregnancy, and Fatphobia
morganpost's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Deep look inside a woman who I swear I’ve met before, and within whom I can see parts of myself that I try to hide and ignore. Beautifully written and painfully real
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder
Minor: Pregnancy
cozyscones's review against another edition
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Classism and Infidelity
Minor: Pregnancy
ukponge's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Pregnancy, Infidelity, and Classism
scarlettreadsbooks's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Eating disorder, Toxic relationship, and Pregnancy
sxndaze's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
She was going to waste, she feared, she knew, the life she had made spoiling around her, turning to rot.
what a wild ride. an encapsulation of what it feels like for the life you’ve built to spiral out of control. hazell writes with such intent and incorporates food into the story seamlessly. the descriptions are rich and lush and border on gross and nearly too much. you feel like you’re over indulging.
the level of anxiety that is constantly humming in the background is impeccable and consistently rises until it hits its peak. it ties itself with the descriptions of food and i’m obsessed.
spoiler: you’ll never know exactly what kit did to betray piglet. some people would hate that. normally, i wouldn’t be a fan, but i kinda like that here. you can assume it’s infidelity, but you can fill in the blanks with what you think is unforgivable and make it personal. it almost hits harder that way.
a gorgeous debut and i look forward to what hazell writes next.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pregnancy, Body shaming, Eating disorder, and Classism
Moderate: Vomit
wordsmithreads's review
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I am not someone who cares about food writing. Descriptions of baking, of chopping vegetables or preparing a glaze do not romance me into feeling any particular way. And yet, after finishing this, I stood at the stove, wondering, “What if I added [blank] to this? Maybe this seasoning? Would these pair well?” Hazell’s debut would be delectable for the food descriptions alone, but the pointed plotlines around women, women’s eating habits, and control — Follow the recipe, follow the rules, Hazell writes at one point — are spun like the sugar of the croquembouche. I found myself marveling at how many phrases and adjectives in our language are food-based — devoured, hungered, gorging, bitter, soured, sweet. They are sprinkled (seasoned?) artfully throughout the text as Hazell bakes (okay, I’ll stop) the picture of Piglet’s spiraling gluttony in response to her to-be-husband’s betrayal. Many plot points are implied, including the true reason behind Piglet’s nickname, but I was never lost in the plot. I loved Piglet, even when she was making bad decisions. All the tension leading up to the wedding day was excellent. And I was very pleased to find out that Hazell has a PhD in creative writing, and her research is on food-writing in twenty-first-century fiction — that added another great layer to this smart read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia, Eating disorder, Pregnancy, and Body shaming
Minor: Infidelity
torturedreadersdept's review
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Body shaming, Dysphoria, Body horror, Classism, Fatphobia, Gaslighting, and Pregnancy
Minor: Bullying, Excrement, Grief, Cursing, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Alcohol, and Abandonment
maddie7217's review
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
first things first, i am obsessed with this cover. i think it is perfect, i think it is inviting, i think it is one of the most true to form book covers i’ve come across. so now let’s chat about what’s beyond the cover…
as you all may know, one of my favorite genres of book is “the angry woman”. let. me. tell. you. this book does this trope so incredibly well. in some cases, piglet’s anger in justified, in other’s it’s a reflection of her own shortcomings. she uses her anger for good, evil, and everything in between. this book tackles issues like class, norms, and societal expectations all while being themed around piglet’s sincere passion for food.
what impressed me so much about this book is how paramount the discussions of food were. so much of this book was dedicated to detailing her actions as she made different meals, descriptions of each individual ingredient, and sometimes even plans to create food or discussion of menu items. while if you told me this at face value i might turn my nose up and think ‘how fun can reading about food possibly be,’ it was so enthralling. the author used these cooking scenes as a highly effective way of expressing emotion and tension and it created a perfect storm for me as a reader.
the only thing i had hesitation about in this book was that, at the end of each chapter, there was somewhat of a “big picture” moment written in italics where another perspective was considered or deeper feelings were addressed head on. i felt that this sometimes took me out of the moment, but as i got further into the book i felt that it became more appropriate just due to the way it was being used in those later chapters.
all in all, this book was really great and i do recommend you check it out!! thank you to netgalley and lottie hazell for the arc! i’m so glad i came across it
as you all may know, one of my favorite genres of book is “the angry woman”. let. me. tell. you. this book does this trope so incredibly well. in some cases, piglet’s anger in justified, in other’s it’s a reflection of her own shortcomings. she uses her anger for good, evil, and everything in between. this book tackles issues like class, norms, and societal expectations all while being themed around piglet’s sincere passion for food.
what impressed me so much about this book is how paramount the discussions of food were. so much of this book was dedicated to detailing her actions as she made different meals, descriptions of each individual ingredient, and sometimes even plans to create food or discussion of menu items. while if you told me this at face value i might turn my nose up and think ‘how fun can reading about food possibly be,’ it was so enthralling. the author used these cooking scenes as a highly effective way of expressing emotion and tension and it created a perfect storm for me as a reader.
the only thing i had hesitation about in this book was that, at the end of each chapter, there was somewhat of a “big picture” moment written in italics where another perspective was considered or deeper feelings were addressed head on. i felt that this sometimes took me out of the moment, but as i got further into the book i felt that it became more appropriate just due to the way it was being used in those later chapters.
all in all, this book was really great and i do recommend you check it out!! thank you to netgalley and lottie hazell for the arc! i’m so glad i came across it
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, and Eating disorder
Moderate: Body shaming