Review: Aftertaste by Meredith Mileti

Title: Aftertaste
Author: Meredith Mileti
Publisher: Kensington Books
Publish Date: September 1, 2011
Source: Receiving a copy from the PR company (this did not affect my review)

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You love food centric books. 
• You love interesting characters.
• You love strong characters.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Mira Rinaldi lives life at a rolling boil. Co-owner of Grappa, a chic New York City trattoria, she has an enviable apartment, a brand-new baby, and a frenzied schedule befitting her success. Everything changes the night she catches her husband, Jake, "wielding his whisk" with Grappa's new waitress. Mira's fiery response earns her a court-ordered stint in anger management and the beginning of legal and personal predicaments as she battles to save her restaurant and pick up the pieces of her life. Mira falls back on family and friends in Pittsburgh as she struggles to find a recipe for happiness. But the heat is really on when some surprising developments in New York present her with a high stakes opportunity to win back what she thought she had lost forever. For Mira, cooking isn't just about delicious flavors and textures, but about the pleasure found in filling others' needs. And the time has come to decide where her own fulfillment lies - even if the answers are unexpected."

My Two Cents:

This is a story of one woman trying to figure out what her plan B is (and who doesn't need a plan B). It's a story of love and life balance and pursuing what's important and what you love. I can totally see where Mira is coming from. She literally walks in on her husband umm... engaging in extracurricular activities with one of the employees that works in Mira and her husband's restaurant. I'd be angry too. There are some characters in various books that I wish I could shake some sense into them and tell them to just get over it. But Mira was different. You really feel for her. She worked so hard to set up her restaurant only to have her livelihood destroyed by her husband's roving eye. Mira is real. When the book opens, she's in the midst of an anger management class, which she fails at. I love reading about characters who have very human flaws. Eventually she finds what she's looking for though as so many of us do.


The other star of this book is the food, oh the food. Mira owns an Italian restaurant. She learned how to cook in Italy. The descriptions of the things that Mira and the other characters both cook and eat are written in such lovely, vivid detail that you feel like you can taste it. This book made me hungry! The author added a nice touch at the end by including some of the recipes that Mira and the other characters made in the book. Like Mira's food in the book, they are simple recipes filled with all sorts of gorgeous ingredients. You better believe that I will be trying some of these recipes.


Bottom line: This book has a lot of good food and a lot of heart; you'll eat this one right up!