Customer Reviews

Girl Cook: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is full of many laughs and many unbelieveable situations! It shows that men still feel they dominate the world and woman are still struggling to break through the glass ceiling. This book is also enjoyable for anyone who loves being in the kitchen.

Treat your taste buds to this delightful book from first time author Hannah McCouch. Enter the kitchens of New York restaurants with Layla Mitchner, a Cordon Bleu graduate who is desperate to move from salads up to finer cooking. The degree of chauvinism she encounters is frightening in modern times, and readers will be rooting for Layla as they enjoy the scrumptious descriptions of food throughout the book.

Layla has relationship problems as well, with bad dates after almost humorously bad dates with a decidedly Mr. Wrong. Mr. Right is in the picture, but Layla will see it long after readers do.

GIRL COOK is refreshing. Fans of the young woman/diary/relationship genre will literally eat this up, but it has an edge not always seen in those titles. In addition to the fun setting of kitchens and cookery, Layla is passionate about her work and not obsessed with men. She is more interested in making this career work than waiting by the phone. But readers looking for romance will not be disappointed.

McCouch has a gift for creating a believable cast and setting. This book will leave readers hungering for more of her work.

--- Reviewed by Amy Alessio

This book is not altogether unpleasant, but the narrator lacked the redeeming qualities necessary to hold my sympathy for an entire novel. The book also seemed to take more than a few ideas from Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones' Diary," but Helen Fielding does it much, much better.

I forced myself to finish this book though I found the voice of the protagonist annoying and the writing surprisingly callow in places (the author has an MFA!?). There are certainly better books in this genre to choose from.

I read this book years ago and recently reread it. I liked it equally as much the second time around. Having spent time in the restaurant industry, i appreciate the real-world insider view of what it's like to be a girl cook. appreciate the book for what it is ... a good read for anyone interested in the restaurant industry or with a dream of being a Girl Cook.

Purchased this book while I was in culinary school. It is witty, fun, and quite a bit of it is true to life. I enjoyed it very much and passed it around to all my fellow "girl cooks". It is so true that you apply for a job as a woman and end up making salads for 2 years. Until you work for a bada** female chef who throws you on the broiler station and makes you prove yourself!

This book won't disappoint you as long as you have realistic expectations. The themes aren't new- twentysomething girl trying to find love in the big city and struggling for success in a man's world- but it's a good little piece of fluff, nonetheless.
'Girl Cook' is a quick read, and the humor is sharp and witty. The plot is predictable, but is entertaining enough to keep you reading. If you enjoyed 'Loose Lips' by Claire Berlinski or the Bridget Jones' Diary books, then this will probably be a good book for you.

I found more reality in this book than most other people, it appears. I am currently a student at Le Cordon Bleu. This is the reason I bought the book. I feel very much like Layla. Unsure of myself at times, trying to play it cool, wanting a job in the restaurant industry. Certainly it was odd how Layla continuously ran into Dick Davenport and practically began a relationship with him before they even had a first date. The book does end abrubptly but it leaves readers with a smile (or scowl); the future for Layla can be as happily-ever-after as readers decide.

Women can relate to Layla, at least I did. I may have bought the book because of the fact that the author, main character, and myself have all attended Le Cordon Bleu, but I read it because Layla is a real woman I can indentify with - her ability to continue soldiering on gave me motivation to do the same. Hannah McCouch wrote this book in a manner in which it's entirely believable. She may not be an A-list author, but I'm not sure that matters. A lot of A-list authors aren't there because they write well but rather because they're marketed to be best-sellers.

The book is too short and Layla can make you feel fat - she's 5'7" and 140 lbs., a perfectly respectable weight and yet she thinks she's a hippo. I got past those two dislikes easily enough; this is a book I won't be selling on Amazon marketplace.

Two of my favorite genres are "chick lit" and "food lit". Sadly, this novel is an embarassment to both. While the culinary aspects of the novel do seem realistic, I had no empathy for Layla. As the main character, I found her utterly unlikeable and the plot to be completely unrealistic (especially the ending). I was not rooting for her... she was whiney, bitchy and a bit emotionally disturbed. The supporting characters were one-dimensional stereotypes at best.

Even though it's a quick read, don't waste even a few hours on it.

As a cook in a three star restaurant, I consider Layla Mitchner an afront to women cooks everywhere. Any woman entering the culinary field knows that it has been dominated by men since Escoffier. Layla just takes this in stride as the way it is instead of sticking up for herself and showing that women, too, belong in the professional kitchen.

Her penchant for bad relationships and alcohol and dreams of the ideal career and love are the only realism that kept this reader's attention.