Life From Scratch [Kindle Edition]

Melissa Ford (Author)

Book Description

Divorced, heartbroken and living in a lonely New York apartment with a tiny kitchen, Rachel Goldman realizes she doesn't even know how to cook the simplest meal for herself. Can learning to fry an egg help her understand where her life went wrong? She dives into the culinary basics. Then she launches a blog to vent her misery about love, life and her goal of an unburnt casserole.To her amazement, the blog's a hit. She becomes a minor celebrity. Next, a sexy Spaniard enters her life. Will her souffles stop falling? Will she finally forget about the husband she still loves? And how can she explain to her readers that she still hasn't learned how to cook up a happy life from scratch?

Product Details

• File Size: 353 KB
• Print Length: 198 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1935661981
• Publisher: Bell Bridge Books (December 1, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004EEPK08
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,489 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 95 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stayed up way past my bed time...but it was worth it! January 19, 2011

By Jane M.

Format:Paperback

With a young child, and a couple of part time jobs to keep things going around our house, I keep a fairly strict bedtime for myself since my day starts at 5:30 a.m. I'm in bed by 9, and asleep by 9:30.

I stayed up until 12 midnight reading this book...it was like dark chocolate, your favorite christmas cookies, or hiding under the covers with a flashlight reading on the first night of summer. I kept telling myself one more chapter, one more chapter, but I literally could not put it down.

The characters feel like they could be your friends, and the language is creative and descriptive, and I wasn't really ready for the plot twists, they came out of the blue for me, but thinking about it days later, they feel like exactly how the story should end.

In my mind the ending was a thing of beauty--left you imagining how things turned out and wanting for more.

Life from Scratch II perhaps? Probably not, but this book grabbed me in the way Jennifer Weiner's books do--real characters that are easy to relate to, and excellent writing. Can't wait for another one by this author!

89 of 94 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Life From Scratch: a delicious read December 26, 2010

By Lori Holden

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Anyone who has ever experienced heartache or setback of any kind will love this book about a journey to self. Whimsical and light, the universal search of Rachel to right herself after a divorce had me at June Cleaver's rolling pin.

It took me only 3 days to read the book. That wasn't my intent, especially since I began it just prior to holiday busy-ness, but I stayed up long into the night to see how Rachel would deal with her romance and career dilemmas.

Hot? Oooh la la. Yummy? Lip smackingly. Un-putdownable? Absolutely. Predictable? Nope.

And those are a few of the many reasons I highly recommend "Life From Scratch."

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Humor, Heart, and Sage Commentary on Professional, mid-30s women's condition December 12, 2010

By Colombe Cohen

Format:Kindle Edition

I purchased Life from Scratch (the author's first novel), after having bought her non-fiction effort for a friend experiencing infertility. I had just finished Nicole Krauss's lovely, but labor intensive Great House. Ford's novel requires none of the plot-diagramming required by Krauss's book, but packs the same sense of humanity. Deeply funny, Ford's book is accessible, without pandering to the reader, and accurately charts the messy, serrated struggle of professional women attempting to balance work and relationships, while rediscovering their identities in the process. In this post-modern all-novels-require-footnotes literary market, it is refreshing to discover this witty, new voice and her smart, character-driven fiction.

More About the Author

Melissa Ford is the author of the blog, Stirrup Queens (http://stirrup-queens.com). She is also a contributing editor at BlogHer. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts--Amherst. You can find her on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MelissaFordAuthor). She lives with her twins and writer husband, Josh.

Melissa's books are Navigating the Land of If (Seal Press, 2009), Life from Scratch (Bell Bridge, December 2010), Measure of Love (Bell Bridge, April 2013), and Apart at the Seams (Bell Bridge, coming 2014). She is also the author of Nidah, a short story on Amazon. She curses her common name and apologizes for any confusion with the other Melissa Fords on Amazon.