Food Fight by Jill LaMontPublished: February 2014, 137 pages
Source: I received a copy from Story Cartel in exchange for an honest review.
Description: Fifteen-year old Jocelyn Bell can't catch a break. Her dad is about to get remarried, and her mom is too depressed to even remember to buy groceries. After a surprisingly grotesque field trip to the college biology department, she decides to start a vegetarian cooking club with a few other sophomores at her high school. This unwittingly creates a rivalry with the well-established Culinary Club, who are avid meat-eaters. As the two clubs get ready to face off in a cooking competition, every area of Jocelyn's life teeters on the brink of collapse. Can she hold it together long enough to make it through the cook-off, and then her dad's wedding?
Food Fight includes several easy and delicious vegetarian recipes for beginning cooks. Recipes include Szechuan Peanut Noodles, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, Portobello Mushroom Burgers, Chocolate & Cherry Pie, and more.
My Review: Right off the bat, my heart went out to Jocelyn (Joss). Her parents divorced and her father is getting remarried. Life is full of changes and she feels neglected, with good reason. It seems like her mom can't even function enough to feed her! Joss is a vegetarian and decides to start a club at school, but finds out they have to compete with a meat eating club in a cook-off.
I loved seeing the way Joss grew into herself. She realized who her true friends really were and made new friends, all because of a common interest. I loved seeing her small group of friends band together when it really counted.
My daughter is a vegetarian and sometimes people give her a hard time about it, so I get it. I felt there were a few places in the story where it was a soap box for the author to discuss those issues and to try and convert others to become vegetarian. Those parts seemed to take on a more serious tone and then it went back to the normal tone of the novel. It just felt a little out of place.
Some of those recipes sounded really, really good!
Content: Clean, but some talk of underage partying (drinking, drugs).
No comments:
Post a Comment