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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
I loved this story. I started listening to it on Audible but didn’t enjoy the narration so I abandoned it after an hour. Reading the book gave me a different perspective to the author’s story and the writing did it for me. This story is about coming to terms with the family you’re born into and giving yourself permission to believe in yourself.
I almost gave up on this book with about 4 and a 1/2 hours remaining, and then...I fell madly and deeply in love with Lisa Donovan, her buttermilk, her strong feminine power, and everything else about her. She is exactly the motivation I need as I head into my 50th year. How I would LOVE to be in her tribe and learn from the women she has had the pleasure to meet. This book will not be for everyone, and if you get to a point where you want to stop, I urge you to forge ahead. I don't think you will regret it.
Lisa Donovan, thank you for loving hospitality and calling out some of the most egregious things in our industry.
Lisa Donovan, thank you for loving hospitality and calling out some of the most egregious things in our industry.
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Read when I was sick. It punches straight through, then waxes poetic. As a woman of a similar age and some similar experiences, I find my own life is the reverse. Many true things are written here. The love story is my jam.
This book is absolutely beautiful. It should be on every aspiring cooks shelf alongside Kitchen Confidential, but as a more hopeful version of what the restaurant and pastry industries can become.
This was a powerful book to listen to. The author adds such depth by narrating it herself - you can hear her exasperation and her IDGAF attitude just as loud as the fatigue and devotion to her craft and her family and her legacy. And I think she has an important message for those uninterested in or unable to "lean in" to their careers: women do not have to measure success the same way as a man. It might be harder at first but you can carve a path that is your own, that you can sustain, and that won't kill you in the process.
I just couldn't take her anymore. This was the Pick for my book club this month. My bookclub is made upmof women from the hospitality industry. This really should have been a book I loved. I have worked in the US and consider American cuisine my specialist subject, I even know some of the people in this book, but I still couldn't like Lisa. In fact no one in our group did. She was insufferable. The book desperately needed a better editor. Why on earth did she keep referring to her husband and child by their full names? John Donovan this, Maggie Donovan that, it was odd.
I wish I had loved this, but the ego was just too much.
I wish I had loved this, but the ego was just too much.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
Moderate: Animal death, Cultural appropriation
For all the women who feel both exploding with potential and made to fear that by the world. Reading this book was an emotionally intense experience akin to having your inner thoughts, good and bad, be read out loud back to you. Even the moments where you don’t necessarily relate personally, it is an incredibly moving emotional account that instigates personal reflection through the sharpened lens of what it means to be a woman in the world.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
I appreciated this honest memoir. The author has had quite a live, both inside restaurant kitchens and beyond them. She tells her story with the same beautiful mix of courage and vulnerability that she has lived her life thus far. Hers is a story of drive, ambition, hard-won self confidence, and table after table filled with delectable food. It'll make you hungry too, but it's worth it.