A French Wedding

April 1, 2017
A weekend among friends takes a confusing turn when long-simmering issues rise to the surface.As the cook for former rock star Max Dresner, Juliette certainly sees a lot. When she's asked to serve the guests at his weekendlong birthday celebration at his French country home, she inevitably becomes entwined in their drama and history. For Juliette, this job with Max was meant to serve as a distraction from her past. The opening section of the novel begins two years earlier, when Juliette rushes home to Douarnenez from her busy life in Paris to deal with her ailing parents. She misses out on the opportunity to ensure a rave review of her Parisian restaurant, Delphine, and quickly discovers that the situation with her parents' health was direr than she anticipated. After they die, she leaves heartbreak and her restaurant behind in Paris to attempt to start anew. Meanwhile, in the present, Max is feeling conflicted over his 40th birthday. His life has veered from its expected path time and time again, and he's still pining over Helen, the woman who stole his heart in college but remained unattainable. At the beginning of a new decade in his life, he's decided that this will be the weekend when he makes his move. Among the other guests at the party, relationships falter and bloom, old wounds are opened, and the weekend irreparably changes how they will forever see one another. The novel's richest passages are about food and cooking, with particular care taken to describe the kouign-amann, a cake that's the specialty of Juliette's hometown. Since Juliette struggles between the pull of Paris and her obligation to Douarnenez, a local pastry gaining popularity in the big city serves as an apt metaphor. Tunnicliffe (Season of Salt and Honey, 2015, etc.) presents a somewhat predictable but still enjoyable portrait of love, friendship, and exquisite cuisine.

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July 1, 2017

Tunnicliffe's (The Color of Tea; Season of Salt and Honey) latest offering whisks readers off to the coast of France, where fading rock star Max is about to turn 40. He is gathering his oldest college friends for a birthday weekend, with the ulterior motive of confessing his love to best friend Helen. Enter Juliette, Max's new private chef. Having just suffered a nasty breakup, given up her restaurant in Paris, and moved home to be with her ailing parents, Juliette needs the distraction of cooking to start fresh. But over the course of Max's birthday weekend, old grudges come to light, emotions erupt, and nothing will ever be the same. While the prolog is a little heavy-handed, readers should persevere, as the first chapter will sweep them up and not let go until the last word. The author's style is lyrical and soothing. Juliette is as charming and endearing a voice as one is likely to find. VERDICT Lovers of France, food, friendship, and romance will absolutely devour this new gem of a novel.--Kristen Droesch, Div. of Libs. UX Dept., New York Univ.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2017
Max is a big-time rock star and lead guitarist for The Jacks, and he is about to turn 40. What better way to celebrate than with his family, the friends who have known him since the days of being a starving artist, for a weekend of food, booze, and reminiscing at his home on the French coast? Among the crowd is Juliette, Max's housekeeper and cook, who finds herself drawn ever deeper into the loves and losses of this tight-knit group of friends. Juliette has lost everything in quick successionher parents, her restaurant, her loverand has found solace in the quiet of Max's seaside retreat. In the course of just four days, relationships will be made and unmade, secrets will come to light, and lives will reach a turning pointall culminating in a wedding that many of the assembled guests never expected. Tunnicliffe delivers a solid story with a cinematic sweep that brings together an ensemble of complex, fully developed characters and a lovingly rendered setting, sure to please fans of romantic women's fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)