REVIEW: Food Person by Adam Roberts
Book #56 of 2025, done!
📖BOOK: Food Person by Adam Roberts
🎧FORMAT: Audiobook via Audible
📚GENRE: Contemporary Fiction/Culinary Dramedy
📅RELEASED: May 20th, 2025
⏱️AUDIOBOOK LENGTH: 11 hrs 15 mins (listened at 1.7x speed)
⭐RATING: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
👉 PURCHASE: Click Here to Purchase
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🧳SYNOPSIS:
”Isabella Pasternack is a food person. She revels in the beauty of a perfectly cooked egg, she daydreams about her first meal at Chez Panisse, and every inch of her tiny apartment teems with cookbooks, from Prune to Cooking by Hand to Roast Chicken and Other Stories. What Isabella is not, unfortunately, is a gainfully employed person. In the wake of a disastrous live-streamed soufflé demonstration, Isabella is summarily fired from her job at a digital food magazine and must quickly find a way to keep herself in buckwheat and anchovy paste. When offered the opportunity to ghostwrite a cookbook for Molly Babcock, the once-beloved television actress now mired in scandal, Isabella warily accepts. Unfortunately, Molly quickly proves herself to be a nightmare collaborator: hungover, flaky, shallow, and—worst of all—indifferent to food. But between Molly’s bizarre late-night texts, goofy confessions, and impromptu road trips, Isabella reluctantly begins to see Molly’s charms. Can Isabella corral Molly out of the gossip rags and into the kitchen? Can she find the key to Molly’s heart and stomach? Or will Isabella’s devotion to her culinary idols and Molly’s monstrous ego send the entire cookbook—and both of their careers—up in flames?”
💬THE VIBE:
Like eating soup when you wanted spaghetti. Warm enough, but not super satisfying. Still, you’ll probably finish the bowl. (See what I did there?)
💡STANDOUT ELEMENTS:
Some fun insider foodie moments that don’t go too deep
Millennial Influencer vibes
Doesn’t take itself too seriously
🧠WHAT STUCK:
The idea that sometimes we just need a little change, and a good sandwich to figure things out. It’s not a deep book, but it doesn’t pretend to be.
👎WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:
The ending was underwhelming and the plot followed such a predictable pattern that I didn’t even need to guess how it would play out. Didn’t dislike it, just didn’t care much.
🤔IF YOU LIKE:
Stories about personal reinvention
Gentle fiction that goes down easy
Foodie themes without being food-lit snobbery
🙅♀️IF YOU DON’T LIKE:
Formulaic storytelling
Books that don’t surprise you in any way (hey there are people that really get into this)
📝FINAL VERDICT:
3 stars.
Perfectly fine. A nice background audiobook when you’re folding laundry or walking the dog. Won’t blow your mind, but won’t annoy you either.
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