A delicious romance stuffed with great food and wonderful characters who will make you cry and laugh when your stomach isn’t growling.
Life is full of surprises, as the saying goes, and as one travels its path one must navigate through swamps and over boulders, the pessimists among us always hearing thunder in the distance and the optimists meeting adversity with a Billy Joel tune. In First Course, Jenn Bouchard takes the reader on a short excursion along life’s path with a beautiful story during which her protagonist, Janie, or as her sister calls her “Jae Jae,” surmounts tragedy while cooking delicious food and cautiously falling in love. Set mostly in Maine, some have called the book a “beach read,” but it’s complex narrator and her compelling observations make it much more than that. In fact, there is only one meaningful scene at the shoreline, at Peak’s Island, near Portland, where the dialogue between Janie and Rocky is certainly more compelling than the view of the ocean.
Crostini and watermelon margaritas early in the story are meant to dampen the disappointment of a runaway boyfriend and loss of a job. The departing boyfriend, Cole, is the novel’s antagonist. He is easy to dislike, particularly if one is put off by self-centered dudes from California. But the real tragedy in the story occurs soon after Janie’s first sip of the margarita, and she is soon on her way to join her sister, Alyssa, in Cape Elisabeth, at the family summer house where, despite its rocky coastline, the story’s swamp of tragedy awaits. What follows is a couple of months, late summer and early fall, through which the author beautifully guides her characters in and out of heartbreak, confusion, and at last triumph. The writing is smooth and the action is evenly paced. The characters are well developed by the author, who magnificently juxtaposes their personalities to highlights their strengths and flaws: the boyfriends, Lance, Mark, Cole and Rocky; Janie’s mother Corinne and Lance’s mother Meredith; Alyssa’s husband, dastardly at first but soon redeemed, and Cole, who gets close to improving, but remains impossible to like. By the end of the novel a reader really knows these people, a tribute to the author’s careful development of them by their interactions with each other and the narrator.
A year elapses near the end of the novel, and closure arrives, as it should in a good romance. But the end is multi-dimensional, believable and yet elegantly uplifting, with a final touch of humor. As Janie says, “My whole life is in one room.” It’s not the customary kiss on the beach at sunset. It’s a wonderful moment, a capsule of sensory appreciation the reader can pocket to enjoy over and over. Oh, and was food mentioned? The books plot is energized with good food, from homemade biscuits with bacon, meatballs, pizza, and spinach and mushroom wantons. We’ll overlook the rancid gorgonzola. Janie had nothing to do with that.
Mark Zvonkovic, Reviewer and Author
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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
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Read with wine and good food!
👩🏻🍳 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 👩🏻🍳First Course is the debut novel from @jennbouchardbos. It’s a short and sweet novel about the twists and turns that life throws at you. Janie is just laid off from her job at a small Chicago magazine when she receives news that her parents have died in a plane crash. She’s on her way home to her parents summer house in Cape Elizabeth, Maine when she also hears that her sister’s husband has been cheating on her and Alyssa has thrown him out of the house. They both escape to Maine together with Alyssa’s two daughters. Janie takes solace in cooking for the family and it’s one of the few things that’s keeping her together. She volunteers for a college fair that her mom was volunteering, and she meets a man from her last, Rocky. They hit it off and there’s a sweet romance.I definitely relate to Janie in this novel as I was also 24 when my father passed away. It was such a difficult time, I can’t even imagine how hard it would be to lose both at the same time. I loved all the food references to both the delicious food Janie makes and the gross food Lance’s mom makes! Make sure you enjoy this book with something delicious and a glass of wine! 🍷
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