The All You Can Dream Buffet

November 1, 2013
A diverse group of bloggers become fast friends, sharing their passion for food and their thoughts via email. RITA award winner O'Neal (The Garden of Happy Endings, 2012, etc.) features the bloggers' stories in a contemporary romance about damaged characters, heartache and new beginnings. Hoping to find the right successor on the eve of her 85th birthday, Lavender Willis summons members of the Foodie Four to a celebration at her Oregon farm. Lavender's worried her nephews will sell the land to the wrong person after her death, and she wants to ensure the continuation of her organic enterprise. Although she feels healthy, something (perhaps those visions of her late friend?) is urging her to action. Her friends wish to honor their eldest member, so each blogger packs her emotional baggage, hitches up her trailer and heads to Lavender Honey Farms. There, the group interacts, engages in deep thoughts/discussions/soul searches, offers sage advice, cooks and plans for the party. Ruby, the pregnant youngest member who's first to arrive, is a childhood leukemia survivor and strict vegan. She's mourning the abrupt end of a relationship when she meets Noah, the military veteran who manages Lavender's property. Former prima ballerina Valerie and her teenage daughter Hannah arrive next. They're moving to San Diego to start anew after losing the rest of their family in a plane crash, and Hannah's having a hard time coping with survivor's guilt. Ginny, a housewife whose treatment by her family and friends reinforces her low self-esteem, arrives last. Craving independence, she embarks on the trip with her dog, but she soon discovers a few days' practice hauling her vintage Airstream on flat Kansas roads near her home is poor preparation for the mountainous journey. Along the way, Ginny encounters treacherous elements, becomes ill and meets an intriguing trucker. O'Neal's gentle narrative is sprinkled with gratuitous sexual content that seems out of character and context, but with the exception of a few head-scratching passages (a vegan recipe that includes Worcestershire Sauce, for example), those searching for an undemanding read will find this feel-good story satisfying. Rather predictable, but it rings all the right bells.

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January 1, 2014
Lavender Willis is about to turn 85 when she decides to pick the right person to inherit her organic farm in O'Neal's charming and genuine portrayal of choices made for better or worse. With the secret intention of bequeathing to one of them her beloved farm and its organic legacy, foodie blogger Lavender invites to her Lavender Honey Farms in Oregon her three closest online friends, Kansas cake blogger Ginny, who has always lived her life for others and is quietly desperate to make a drastic change for true happiness; Ruby, who is young, pregnant, heartbroken, and passionate about grassroots living and eating; and Val, a wine blogger who arrives with her teenage daughter in tow, both of them still grappling with the aftereffects of tragedy. Peppered with realistic details about organic farming, blogging, the Oregon landscape, and the very relatable sorrows and joys of being human, this is a sweetly engrossing read with which to curl up. Recipes scattered throughout the book add appeal. Recommend to fans of Kristin Hannah.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2013

A RITA Award winner for How To Bake a Perfect Life (almost 90,000 copies out there) and The Lost Recipe for Happiness (which has gone back to press nine times), O'Neal here introduces us to eightysomething Lavender Willis, who's invited three close online friends, food bloggers all, to her organic farm so that she can decide which one will inherit it.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.