Recipe for Love [Paperback]

This book appealed to me as soon as I saw it. Romance, food, mystery, Sorrento and Vegas - sounded perfect. But so often these books disappoint with their poor research, weak writing, namby pamby characters... but not this one! I loved it from the moment I entered the world of food writer Cassia Marini and chef and restauranteur Rocco Disanti, and it was a really nasty shock to the system being deposited back in my Yorkshire home and day-to-day life at the end.

Cassia Marini, daughter of a famous actress who has lost her way, writes for "Scrumptious" magazine and is planning her wedding to nice but boring lawyer Finn. But when she gets the opportunity to do an up close and personal series on Rocco Disanto, the notoriously difficult restauranteur, with restaurants in Sorrento and London, and another to open in Las Vegas, she leaves her wedding planning to her mother-in-law and heads off to Italy. She also sees it as an opportunity to research the background of her late father, the food writer Marco Marini. What happens in Italy won't surprise anyone, but the subsidiary characters and story threads are what gives this story its depth, breadth and interest. Cassia's mother, Diana, decides to abandon her dissolute lifestyle, dump her toyboys, and return to the stage in a searingly exposed role. Finn's mother, Grace, takes full advantage of Cassia's absence to create the wedding she wants, blissfully ignoring the wishes of the couple. Meanwhile Cassia's sister Jules has an ill-judged relationship with Finn's tennis pro brother Dom.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Cassia gets to know Rocco's family - his widowed grandmother Sofia and heart of the family, and model Aurelia (Rocco's sister) planning her own wedding in Capri. Overshadowing it all is a historic curse over the family, and the mystery around an orphaned child rescued from a landslide. The threads and many characters converge for Aurelia's wedding, and the ending is as feel-good as it should be, with all the threads beautifully tied together.

The whole book has a wonderful sense of place, and the food descriptions make this book one to avoid if you're on a diet. I loved every page - this book is in the best traditions of the likes of Jilly Cooper, but with a fresh modern twist. Pure escapism between two covers, and highly recommended for anyone who enjoys excellent storytelling that engages all the senses.

This is the story of British food writer Cassia, and her travels to Sorrento in Italy, to work with famous chef Rocco Disanti. Cassia is engaged to be married to Finn, and their wedding is happening in just a few months, yet when she's offered the opportunity to live and work in Sorrento for a few weeks, she just can't turn it down, much to the annoyance of Finn's mother Grace, who decides she'll plan the wedding for them instead. Cassia quickly falls in love with Italy - the sunshine, the food, and of course working with Rocco. But she can't seem to figure out the fiery chef - one minute he's hot, the next he's cool towards her, and it makes her begin to wonder about her life back in England and whether it's really what she wants. Will her trip to Italy end in a recipe for love?!

I love a book that when you're reading it, it totally and utterly transports you away from the reality of your everyday life and leaves you in the pages with the characters, and that is exactly what Recipe for Love did for me. Every time I picked it up, I forgot I was sitting on my sofa and instead I was absorbed into the world of Cassia in Sorento, or Grace and her son Finn in their lovely home planning the wedding of all weddings. Of course, my favourite scenes were those in Sorrento, with Wagstaff's descriptions of location, weather and food totally whetting my appetite, and have to be honest... made me more than a little hungry! The way Cassia writes in the book about food for her job as a food mag journalist is just tantalising, and I can see why she's such a success in her job! Italian food is amazing anyway, but when it's written about how Wagstaff does... wow!

The characters though are what makes this book so readable. They are so readable, and I thought each of them, however minor, all added something to the story and made it so much fun to read. The main character is Cassia, and although I wanted to give her a bit of a shake in parts about Finn, she was a great lead character, and was a good match for Rocco in the book. Rocco, a lovely Italian, dark and brooding chef, was your typical guy in the sense he couldn't admit to his feelings, but I loved how he ran his business and was so close to all of his family, certainly a male character to fall in love with! Then there's Finn, Cassia's fiancé who I hated straight away, and stayed that way throughout the book; his even worse mother Grace, just an awful woman; Diana, Cassia's mother, who is haunted by a past secret that she is carrying around; Cassia's sister Julia, again a pretty despicable human being who I couldn't feel sympathetic towards at all, Rocco's grandmother who was fab and Rocco's sister, a flamboyant and self-centred model who also happened to have a big heart and was so much fun to read, especially in scenes with the more stuffy Cassia.

Yes, there's quite a big cast, but because of the way Wagstaff wrote the book, I didn't have any problems keeping up at all. I loved how the action moved from London to Sorrento, to Vegas and back to Sorrento again. Wagstaff writes so beautifully about Sorrento, I wonder what research went into this because it really came alive in my mind as I was reading, and is now somewhere I definitely want to go! There are a lot of twists and turns in the book, and quite a few other storylines running alongside the main one with Cassia, so there was always something going on, and never a lull in the book at all. It had me totally absorbed from the first to the last page, and was a complete joy to read. I actually felt sad as I turned the last page, because I felt like I'd gotten to know the characters and was sad to leave them behind - that is the sign of a great writer. I thoroughly enjoyed Recipe for Love and think it's definitely one to be taking on your summer holidays! A gorgeous book of Italy, food and love - what more could you want?!

This book was totally brilliant!! Once I'd started reading it I couldn't put it down as I got so engrossed in the story. All the talk about Italian food did make me feel hungry though so perhaps best not to read it on an empty stomach!! Would definitely recommend this book as a fab love story.