Lilly and Val were friends until a betrayal at age 21. When Val's mother passes away 26 years later she decides to reach out to Lilly. They correspond by email over the next month with increasingly bitter messages and again go their separate ways. The next portion of the book reverts to a Recipe Club that they started as 10 year olds, including recipes in letters to each other; some while they lived in the same area (evidenced by referrals to phone calls, visits and sleepovers) and some while they were at various camps and eventually college. The letters reveal the love and friction between the two, leading to their fallout. The recipes are a mix of simple childish interests to more complex dishes. I didn't find anything in the recipes to grab me and I didn't feel vested in any of the characters. I was interested enough to read to the end, the whole thing felt too contrived. ( )

Un incrocio tra "Il cucchiaio d'argento" e Plauto: banale, noioso e inutile. ( )

This is the story of Lily and Val. Lily and Val are friends. They are also enemies. I enjoyed the dual pov format. I also enjoyed how the recipes were introduced. There were moments of chuckles but overall, as I read, I kept thinking how self-absorbed both characters were. As I read I understood why but that self-absorption doesn't allow a connection between the characters. ( )

Another story told thru letters and emails and recipes. Our book group read this for our November selection. We chose to have each member make a recipe from the book. Do not follow the recipe for Zucchini Bread it needs an adjustment in the liquid. ( )

This book was a bit of a letdown. I think the authors could've done a much better job, maybe they shouldn't have used the letter-exchange format for the majority of the book, that kind of writing requires a lot of skill and creativity to successfully pull off.

I guessed that the girls had the same father well before the letter was read after his death--there were numerous clues, especially the entry in her mother's journal that Val found, dated not long before Val was born. That seemed fairly obvious, but Val didn't seem to blink at all just wondered what her mom was talking about...

The recipes, which were the part I was most looking forward to, seemed average and already familiar, and the letters and recipes seemed very contrived--too much of a stretch in my opinion.

I wish I had enjoyed the story more, it definitely had potential.

( )

I LOVE this book it was VERY hard for me to put it down , It has many interesting and tasty recipes. I highly recommend the sangria recipe , It was VERY good! ( )

Lilly and Val are childhood friends with complicated parents. Val's mother is agoraphobic and Lilly's father is her psychiatrist, who takes a vested interest in Val's education and future. They grow up in the late 1960's and into the 70's. At a young age, they create "The Recipe Club"- just the two of them, exchanging recipes back and forth. The format of the book is primarily letters between the two, including the recipes.

I suppose this book is sweet, but it feels very predictable and cliche. The writing is average and the story is... okay. It's good for a break from some heavier reading. ( )

Just couldn't really like this book, very slow and ended each chapter with some recipes I couldn't imagine a kid could be bothered with. I've read a lot of books centered around people cooking and this won't be on my favorite list. ( )

I finished this book so it can't have been too bad, but rather too introspectively 'American' for my liking. The chapters of the novel each ended with a recipe which has been woven into the story. Maybe try the library rather than taking up precious book budget and permanent shelf space.

It’s a super quick read, but the recipes do nothing for the story.
The book wraps up in such a way that it made me angry. ( )

Recipe Club was a friendship book with a twist. This delightful tale of two friends, Lilly and Val, was told in alternating chapters of letters and recipes that take them through the traumas of life in their 40 year friendship . A great summer read and also a good choice for book groups who like to cook along with their reading!

The letters and recipes annoyed me because I had no desire to cook these out- dated recipes and the food element did not add anything to the storyline other than an occasional recipe named after something in the characters' lives. The letters themselves mostly were whining about parents and these supposed friends not getting along. ( )

I was intrigued by this book because of the friendship storyline intertwined with recipes. What I was delighted to find was the story was told through an epistolary journey, first as adults, and then flashed back to their childhood and back through adulthood again. Reading the story through letters to eachother made the story move quite quickly and kept you wanting to turn the page. Plus all the recipes mixed throughout the book really added to the story. Each recipe was specifically chosen for the situation that the girls were in.

I really enjoyed the drama both Val and Lilly had with their parents. But, I did tend to get frustrated with the selfishness of all characters involved. Without giving away the ending, I was happy with the way Lilly and Val's lives came around and how the authors ended the book.

If you like novels about friendship and cooking, this one is a must read for you. Many of the recipes are ones I want to try. Luckily I have the book to keep and do just that. ( )

I'm not sure to whom I would recommend this book; perhaps 20-something women on their own for the first time who need a collection of recipes, or women who need for some reason to relive their teen years of the late 60s & early 70s -- I am neither. There is maybe a handful of the 80+ recipes that I will keep for my collection.
The plot is predictable and the post mortem revelation was completely expected (from about 1/3rd into the book). I didn't like this book for the same reason I don't like 'high-school' or 'desperate housewives' type TV & movies.
I did like the characters; I did like the format of letters, emails, and reprints; I did like the pacing and the present-past-present telling of events--it wouldn't have worked at all as a story if the authors had begun in 1963. The story just wasn't enough to carry all those pluses to a better overall impression. It is, however, a very fast read. ( )

I received this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers – I had given up hope of receiving it as it took over 11 months to find me! The Recipe Club tells the story of two women who reconnect after a death of a parent after not speaking for over 20 years due to a misunderstanding. The book is mostly written through letters and recipes, which are part of the “Recipe Club” that the girls started. This made the book a very fast and easy read. Each recipe is named after what is going on in each girl’s life at the time of the letter. While the book is marketed for adult readers, it seemed to be more appropriate for a young adult reader. While I found the book to be entertaining, it isn’t one that I would read again. ( )

Na ja, schönes Bild auf dem Umschlag – schöner Titel. Aber was hat beides mit dem Inhalt zu tun? Ich konnte keinen Zusammenhang finden.

Es handelt sich in den größten Teilen um einen Briefroman. Der Austausch erfolgt zwischen zwei weiblichen Teenagern und lässt uns teilhaben an mehr oder weniger nichtigen Themen. Die Rezepte, die die beiden austauschen, reißen einen auch nicht gerade vom Hocker.

Aus irgendwelchen Gründen, die mir nicht klar wurden (vielleicht habe ich sie auch beim Blättern übersehen), kommt es zum Zerwürfnis zwischen den Schreiberinnen, und die Lebenswege der beiden gehen auseinander – wie es nun mal so ist mit Kinderfreundschaften. Erst nach über 20 Jahren nähern sich die beiden wieder an. Dann auf den letzten Seiten, die nun nicht mehr in Briefform geschrieben sind und deren Schreib- oder Übersetzungsstil nur als mangelhaft bezeichnet werden kann, kommt das eigentliche Familiengeheimnis ans Licht (als ob ich es nicht schon erahnt hätte). Und das Ende des Buches ist der reinste Kitsch – Friede, Freude, heile Welt! ( )

This was a very cute book based on the friendship of two girls who grew up together. The girls sent each other letters and started a recipe club when they were young. The book spans from the girls' childhood to their adult lives and eventual reconciliation.

I did enjoy that the book was written in email/letter form, which made it a different type of read and very fun at that. I was a little taken aback when in part 3 of the book, the authors decided to return to a regular narrative. I think it took away from the overall flow of the book, but understand why they decided to do it.

Overall, it was not a book that was completely memorable. It was a fun, quick read and something I would consider good for the beach. ( )

I didn't want to like this book, but the characters grew on me. It's the story of two pen pal friends who, at age 12, decide they want to start a recipe club. So throughout the course of their friendship, they send each other recipes with cute names. The story is told through emails and letters. But then at the end, it switches to traditional novel style. While the recipes and letters are good, there are some letters that are skipped or "missing." I spent the first half of the novel trying to figure out what destroyed the friendship of these girls. And honestly once I finally got to the big "end of friendship" moment... I was so frustrated with both of them I just wanted to scream. Then there's a "deep dark secret" unveiled toward the end. It's a good enough book, but I guess I wanted more from the story. ( )

First, let me start off saying that I LOVED the cover this book! I love to bake and I love to cook, so this was the PERFECT cover for this book. It's a cover that would have had me buying this book off a book shelf without knowing anything about the book! Second, I want to say wow! These authors are fantastic.They know how to not only write a novel, but they know how to completely capture their readers and keep them hooked until the last page of the novel.

In The Recipe Club, you'll find emails and letters between to long ago friends,emails from the present and letters from the past. These letters and emails will make you laugh, and cry, as these two friends share EVERYTHING with each other from happy times, to the struggles they have with their not so perfect parents. There are some sad notes and there are some happy notes, too, that really show the bond these friends have. A special bond of recipes, that pull them back together after a terrible and long lasting incident!

Between the laughter and the tears, and then, of course the recipes, I loved this book. It's a book that will bring back memories of your childhood friends, and maybe the memories you share now, with that friend. Sadly, I'm not friends with my childhood friends.....we lost touch years ago, but I have a best friend whom I've never met face to face, and this book really reminded me of her and I, as her and I email each other daily.

The format of this book, the emails and letters and recipes make this novel an easy to read novel. You'll find spice added to the story through the recipes and flavor added by the amazing bond these two women have. These authors really know how to cook up a story and add life to the pages. It's a fun and easy to read novel, that have characters with flaws, yes, but they really come to life when you open this book.

So, if you have a special friend that you love to share with, then share this 5 star book with her. If you love to cook, then read this book, with all the recipes through out-and there are lots of them!- creating a novel/cookbook combination. These two authors are truly talented and I recommend this novel to most everyone. Well done and two thumbs up to these amazing authors!

*This book was provided for review by TLC Book Tours and the publisher* ( )

Epistolary novels are tricky. They frequently fail because the author can't manage to differentiate the voices of the letter writers enough and you find yourself thinking, "Wait - which one is this?" In real life, of course, letters are fascinating and completely unique. Read Virginia Woolf's letters sometime and you will truly know great beauty. Letter writing is a dying art. I wish I could say that I wrote actual letters, but I'm a technology lover and have sent way more email than I've ever written letters.

Successful epistolary novels are like real collections of letters. The voices are unique and there's a delicious sense of voyeurism. Two examples of this are 84 Charing Cross Road and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - both are delightful in their own ways.

I tend to approach books like this with a bit of caution - I have to be in the right frame of mind and I can't spend a bunch of time going back and forth trying to figure out who's who. The beginning of this book drew me in and the rest of the book up to the last third kept me reading.

I come from a family that is completely obsessed with food and I read cookbooks like novels. I spent many years sitting on my father's kitchen floor or his mother's kitchen floor reading cookbooks from the ever present bookcase full of them while they cooked and we talked. Needless to say I read the recipes in this book with pleasure. While I'm a little dubious of pigs in a blanket for a bar mitzvah, I'm not at all dubious of the recipe. The tricky part of creating letters between two women who begin writing each other and exchanging recipes as children and continue to do so through adulthood is making the recipes match their ages and likely skill level. This book does that nicely and I truly appreciated that. Some of the letters, especially between Lilly and Val as children and teenagers resonate nicely. The index of recipes is a bonus!

Another really nice thing about this book is its design. It's obvious that great care was taken in the design of this book - its cover is truly beautiful and its insides are also well designed with graphical elements that honor the story.

The book also illustrates the awful things that women do to their friends with brutal honesty. There were many times in this book where I winced and thought how much I loathe much of their behavior. They are needy and selfish. They practice shunning and hateful talk and lash out at each other in inappropriate ways that made me cringe. At the same time they are loving and supportive of each other and are obviously trying to work out their lives together, despite the inappropriate behavior of every single adult around them (weren't the sixties grand?).

The least successful parts of the book are the first 20 pages and the last part of the book. The last part of the book was particularly jarring. Having read all of these letters I was taken aback when I got to part three, turned the page, and found traditional narrative. I understand the choice, but I wish they hadn't made it. I think they could've continued the story and delivered the denouement through letters and other documents, but the delivery of straight narrative really takes something away from their beautiful book.

I enjoyed this book despite its flaws in the same we all enjoy the people we are friends with who drive us crazy with their tics (like the people that have a compulsive desire to argue - so much so that they'll vociferously defend any side and get righteously angry even when they don't believe in it). None of us perfect. We're all trying to figure out this funny thing called life and I enjoyed seeing a bit of that struggle through LillyPad and ValPal's eyes. ( )

This story is mostly told in emails and letters back and forth between Lilly and Val. Most of the notes have a recipe attached that is connected to what is happening in the story. It starts in the present then backtracks to their childhood and you slowly find out why they haven't spoken in thirty years. I read this book quickly, liking the layout, recipes and cute artwork. I would have given it a higher rating, but I disliked ALL of the characters. They don't seem likable and I don't know why they wanted to be friends! The parents were awful as well!! The ending was a bit far-fetched and a little too tidy for me. So although I enjoyed the book enough to finish it, I was disappointed overall. ( )

A mostly epistolary novel, The Recipe Club opens in April 2000 with an email exchange -- an attempted reconciliation between former childhood friends Val and Lilly, now in their forties. It then backs up to the 1960s to trace that childhood friendship from its heyday of their “recipe club” (a pen-pal exchange of letters and recipes), to a falling out in early adulthood and then decades of estrangement.

There’s an easily guessed plot twist and an over-the-top-tidy ending, but this book is heavier on nostalgia than on story. And beyond the book’s epigraph*, there’s little insight -- I keep thinking of other wise, young narrators I’ve read but that is not these girls. Their angst-y letters might interest a teen reader, but this book is marketed to grown women (based on the nostalgia and reconciliation aspects, I suppose). Although its epistolary structure and recipes interested me, I was disappointed in both -- the recipes are mostly old standards, and I’ve read better epistolaries (though still not an excellent one...)

* Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. --Anais Nin ( )

The Recipe Club:A Tale of Food and Friendship was sent to me by the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. It actually took about ten months to get me; I had actually given up hope of ever receiving it! This is another book in my least favorite genre-the epistolary novel.This always seems to me the lazy way for co-authors to write. I can imagine the authors saying-you be one character, I’ll be another, and let’s write pretend letters to each other and call it a novel. Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel are talented, accomplished women, but novelists? No!

This novel is so flawed in it’s details that I was too distracted to get into the story. The story spans the years from 1963-2003. The letters between the characters, Lilly and Val, are interspersed with recipes they sent to one another. They even credit a consultant in developing these recipes. Well-I really don’t think that capers and cilantro were in every supermarket in 1964, or that canola oil was so readily available in 1965(it was all about the corn oil in those days). And EVOO in 1969-not likely.!

The inaccuracies continue in the current events mentioned in this novel. For starters, no one saw Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway in May 1964, since it opened in September! And one of the characters has an illegal abortion in New York in 1972. Actually, abortion became legal in New York State in 1970. And purple bell-bottoms? Not in 1964. The inaccuracies are endless.

The story itself concerns two girls who are close friends but, due to a misunderstanding, don’t speak for 20 years, and then reconnect after the death of a parent. Not exactly ground breaking. My first thought about the girls is that they didn’t seem all that likely to be friends anyway, and the relationship was destined to fade away as many childhood friendships do. So who cares? Not me ( )

The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel is a narrative mostly written in emails and letters, shifting from a budding friendship between young girls and blossoming into adulthood. Beyond the emails and letters, the novel also includes recipes, which mesh well with the story as each of the girls deals with lost loves and problems with family, including Lovelorn Lasagna.

The novel begins after Valerie and Lilly have endured a 26-year silence in their friendship. After an attempt to regain their lost companionship, the narrative shifts to letters written as children and the start of their recipe club. Recipes are garnered from their parents, family, and friends and often coincide with events in the girls' lives. Many of the letters are ripe with adolescent angst and childlike retorts as they quarrel over ideals and perspectives.

"It was so awful. I was standing in a crowd of other girls I know, and the boys came up to inspect us like we were fruit to be picked. I only got asked to slow-dance once, by a kid who looks like Ichabod Crane with zits. We stepped on each other's feet so hard that I was actually relieved to sit by myself for the rest of the night." (page 136 of hardcover)

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2010/09/the-recipe-club-by-andrea-israel-and-nancy-g... ( )

I know there are some people (one of my sisters to be specific) who don't like epistolary novels. (I should own up to have to look up the the spelling of this I think it would sound better as epistlatory which of course is dead wrong) Anyway, I know reading a story told in letter form is not some folks cup of tea but I like them or at least I don't mind them. Especially a well written one. Though I guess that could be said about any book, if it's well written then it's a good book, no matter, r...more I know there are some people (one of my sisters to be specific) who don't like epistolary novels. (I should own up to have to look up the the spelling of this I think it would sound better as epistlatory which of course is dead wrong) Anyway, I know reading a story told in letter form is not some folks cup of tea but I like them or at least I don't mind them. Especially a well written one. Though I guess that could be said about any book, if it's well written then it's a good book, no matter, right?

The story of two life long friends and the ups and downs of their lives together and apart told through the letters they send each other through childhood until a terrible fight tears them apart. Then after life changing events they begin to write again, this time via email, to reveal a secret that will either tear them apart or bring the together forever. Along the way the Val and Lilly share their love of cooking by sharing recipes in their "Recipe Club" of two.

I loved these two girls, then women and the way their personalities are slowly revealed over the course of their letters. Their hopes and dreams and the relationship between their families that will end up effecting their lives more than they could ever imagine.

This was a well told story told in bits and pieces. While the great secret was easily guessed it didn't stop the story from being very enjoyable and well rounded. Plus the recipes sound very yummy and there really is something for every taste. ( )