If we judge books by their covers, I might never have picked up Kate Jacobs' Comfort Food. (Although TSOR reveals that it is just the cover on my library's edition and not the cover on her site which more accurately reveals the tone of the book). My edition is black with some artfully scattered peaches, some split and open, others closed. But the peaches aren't photographs with dripping juice but artfully painted in a Chardin sort of way--pretty but not gooey. And the book is more of a gooey-peach sort of thing: sweet, soft, sticky, bruised.
Set in the cooking show world with our heroine Gus, her daughters, cohost, neighbor, various beaux, tv figures, etc., this is a book in the "chick lit" genre. Women discover their feelings, have vibrant lives (or change their lives to be more vibrant), cook, fall in love. It is amusing as it riffs off of what can go wrong in the kitchen (especially as folks try to make things go perfectly).
But this book is closer to Jennifer Crusie in style (though less explicit in the sex which Crusie writes with anticipation and tension and steam and here is dealt with behind suggestion and closed doors, MYOB) than some artfully displayed peaches suggested. I may go back and look for some of the books in her other series, The Friday Night Knitting Club, though I vastly prefer cooking to knitting.
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