THE GLASS KITCHEN by Linda Francis Lee is a fabulous story to get lost in. It is a story of contemporary romance with a great deal of magic thrown in. Portia has recently lost her beloved grandmother and just went through a horrible divorce. Her ex husband Richard, starts an affair with her best friend, gets her pregnant and then divorces Portia. She is drowning in grief, and decides to go to New York City to join her sisters Cordelia and Olivia in Manhattan. She is going to start a new life so she leaves her childhood home in Texas with only two suitcases and her grandmother's Glass Kitchen cookbooks.
Not soon after arriving in NYC, she meets Gabriel Kane, a widowed father raising his two daughters, or maybe I should say, trying to raise. He owns the upper floors of the brown stone Portia lives in. She is instantly attracted to him as he is to her, but neither of them acts on it. Portia has "The Knowing", a gift she has had since she was a very young girl. When she moves to NYC she is determined not to use it, but life has a funny way of not doing what you want it to. She and her sisters want to open their own version of The Glass Kitchen in Manhattan, but Gabriel tries to talk her out of it. When Portia learns that Gabriel thinks she is crazy and he doesn't believe in her, her world crumbles. All the while, Portia is developing feelings for his daughters, Ariel and Miranda. They are really missing their mother and Gabriel is refusing to talk to them about her. It's almost like he wants them to forget. Portia knows this is wrong and tries to help the girls see that their dad is grieving too.
I fell in love with THE GLASS KITCHEN from the very first page. Linda Francis Les has a way of pulling you in to the characters lives and making you feel like you've known them all along. My heart was breaking for Miranda and Ariel. They missed their mother so much and she had only been gone a year, and no one would talk to them about her. They didn't want to forget her which is what their father seemed to be trying to do. This story is filled with secrets and I love how Portia wakes up, runs to the kitchen and starts cooking and baking up a storm, not knowing right away why she is doing any of it. The midnight visits that Gabriel makes to Portia down the fire escape really add much spice to the story. As an added bonus, there are recipes at the end of the story and who doesn't love new recipes? I thoroughly enjoyed THE GLASS KITCHEN and can't wait to read more by Linda Francis Lee!
With the glass kitchen, Linda Francis Lee has served up a
novel that is about the courage it takes to follow your
heart and be yourself. A true recipe for life.
Portia Cuthcart never intended to leave Texas. Her dream was
to run the Glass Kitchen restaurant her grandmother built
decades ago. But after a string of betrayals and the loss of
her legacy, Portia is determined to start a new life with
her sisters in Manhattan . . . and never cook again. But
when she moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper
West Side, she meets twelve-year-old Ariel and her widowed
father Gabriel, a man with his hands full trying to raise
two daughters on his own.
Soon, a promise made to her sisters forces Portia back into
a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she
must confront everything she has been running from. What
seems so simple on the surface is anything but when
long-held secrets are revealed, rivalries exposed, and the
promise of new love stirs to life like chocolate mixing with
cream.
The Glass Kitchen is a delicious novel, a tempestuous story
of a woman washed up on the shores of Manhattan who
discovers that a kitchenβlike an islandβcan be a refuge, if
only she has the courage to give in to the pull of love, the
power of forgiveness, and accept the complications of what
it means to be family.
No excerpt available.
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