The Restaurant Critic's Wife, by Elizabeth LaBran

The Restaurant Critic's Wife

by Elizabeth LaBan

Hardcover, 306 pages

Lake Union Publishing, January 5, 2016

4 stars

I devoured this book within 24 hours of starting.

Lila's life as The Restaurant Critic's Wife is perfect on paper. She's married to a man who brings his work home in the form of meals from the restaurants he's reviewing. When her mom is in town they take her to a lovely restaurant on the newspaper's tab. She and her husband have a beautiful little girl and a sweet baby boy. 

There is a lot more to life than what can be seen on the surface. This is what LaBan creates in her delicious novel about one woman's struggle to find her new path as a career woman turned stay at home mom. Lila has made the move from a crisis manager for a large hotel chain to a new life in a new town and while she tries find a way to establish herself in this new role, her husband Sam is trying so hard to live his dream of being the ultimate anonymous critic that he binds Lila to a lifestyle anyone would find confining. Lila has no friends, and is increasingly losing her husband to the demands of his job - which are both real and imagined. 

The difficulties of balancing motherhood, marriage and career are real. It's all to easy to lose the sense of true self when faced with the responsibilities of caring for small children, and LaBan successfully explores these feelings and the consequences of trying to ignore them.

(I received this book from Lake Union Publishing via Net Galley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.)

The beverage pairing for this book is the Caribbean Pineapple, a fruity, tropical drink that pairs well with both the mid-winter blues and a hot summer day on the front steps.  

Ingredients - Pineapple juice, Malibu Rum and Ice.  Measurements depend based on the level of provocation the day has provided.  

Cheers!  Karli