The Kitchen Front review

 Hello Interwebs!

Welcome back to another book review, this one for the second book I read in the month of June. I read The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan. This is a World War II historical fiction following four women competing in a cooking contest to become the first female cohost for the BBC radio program, The Kitchen Front, which discusses how to cook nutritious and pleasing meals with the wartime rationing. As always there are spoilers after the cover picture. 

So The Kitchen Front is told from the perspectives of four women: Nell, a kitchen maid who is dreaming of bigger and better things for herself, Lady Gwendoline, a women trapped in a loveless and abusive marriage, Audrey a war widow trying to eke by with her three sons and failing property, and Zelda a professional chef who is also an unmarried pregnant woman. The four start as rivals: Gwendoline and Audrey are estranged sisters: Audrey the elder who was favored heavily by their mother leaving Gwendoline resentful of her sister; Nell is the kitchen maid who works for Gwendoline's husband and is falling in love with an Italian POW working on a nearby farm, and Zelda works as a cook for the factory workers at the factory Gwendoline's husband owns and then is moved into Audrey's home as a displaced person of sorts. The book follows them as they come together: the cook that Nell works alongside, a woman like a mother to her, passes away; Gwendoline leaves her husband and both her and Nell join Audrey's household; Audrey's husband's body is finally found and she has the memorial service and Zelda has her baby and decides to keep it. By the time the contest is over the four women have purchased and plan to open a restaurant together in the village, raising Zelda's baby, and Nell wins the contest putting herself on the radio and their village restaurant on the map. 

This was a very sweet, heartwarming historical fiction that centered mostly around the burgeoning friendship between these very different women. In the end, you don't care who wins the contest because they all won in a way with their ambitions realized in the opening of their restaurant together but at the same time I was over the moon that the winner was Nell who can barely string a sentence together in front of anyone else when you first meet her and is an orphan who was destined for nothing greater than service but dreamed of more. 

I read this book from June 10th to June 13th and gave it a 4.5/5 stars on Goodreads. This book combined some of my favorite things in historical fiction: a more domestic setting where this takes place during WWII but was about the home front rather than the war itself, cooking, and friendship. I highly recommend this book and will probably read others by this author and along these lines. 

Happy Reading,

Richelle