It’s a couple of years into World War II and housewives in Britain are struggling under the restrictions of food rationing. The BBC hosts a radio program called The Kitchen Front that shares wartime recipes and cooking tips for those housewives. In order to gain more listeners, the radio show decides it needs a woman co-host and announces a cooking contest, where the winner will become the first female co-host of the show. For the four women competing in the contest – widow Audrey, her social-climbing sister Gwendoline, chef Zelda, and orphan Nell – winning the contest would be a chance to change their life.
This is a lovely historical fiction novel about friendship and family. It also brought to life something that I have really only seen in passing about books set during WWII, which is food rationing. Basically, each person had a little ration book and you were only allowed to purchase so much butter or so much sugar and once you used what you had, you had to wait until the next month to get more. The book goes into some of the ways the women created mock food or used substitutes for highly rationed items. At the end of each chapter, there is an authentic recipe for some of the food that was made for the contest. I’m not going to lie – some of those recipes did not sound appetizing.
It was hard reading about the contest, knowing that there would only be one winner. I liked almost all the characters and was rooting for each one to win. I was not a huge fan of Gwendoline and even though she turns herself around towards the end of the novel, I still don’t think I liked her. But I definitely enjoyed the other ladies. Each one has their own challenges to overcome and I really liked the friendship between them.
This was a heartwarming book with some great female characters.
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I love the sound of this book! It’s always so hard when you fall in love with characters and you want everyone to succeed. Sometimes they become a part of your life, in a way you can’t explain. Their pain is your pain. You know?
I can’t even imagine the kind of things they came up with to sub butter and sugar. Maybe this is why we have apple sauce in so many recipes on pinterest… 😅 Haha.
xo Alli | http://www.onthetripside.com
Honestly, some of the recipes did not sound appetizing haha!