Mia Maxwell loves food. She loves it so much that she's made it her career. On the surface Mia seems to have it all. She lives in trendy east London with her best friend, Lizzie, who owns a cupcake cafe. By day she runs her own food PR consultancy, and by night she's a food blogger with a burgeoning audience. Mia has a banker boyfriend, Paul, who enjoys travelling the world, enabling her to taste the globe's culinary delights. But Mia is still hungry and, when she heads down to Cornwall to run a food festival, she doesn't realise that her entire life is about to be cast adrift.
Emma Hamilton is the pen name for a journalist and writer who loves food; She was a staff producer and then freelance reporter for the BBC, CBC, and Deutsche Welle. Emma has written for a number of magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, BBC Magazines, The Mail on Sunday, Four Four Two and Italy Magazine. She has worked on many series and documentaries, including one about food and culture around the world. Emma spent six years reporting from Italy and has made radio programmes in many other countries including Lebanon, Ethiopia, the USA, France, Germany, Russia, and Cameroon. When she's not cooking, reading about food or eating it, she splits her time between presenting, producing and writing. She loves yoga, running, gardening and chilling out with her husband, friends and family at home.
Review: I know I have already reviewed the first couple of novellas in this series, but over Christmas I read right up to the end of the series (plus the Chrsitmas special) and so I wanted to review the books together as a whole series. Firstly I really think that the length of these novellas is perfect. Despite the fact that my Christmas holidays were very busy, I still managed to read the 5 books I had left in this series, one a day. If you are lucky enough to have an hour for lunch, you could probably devour one of these at the same time as that sand which/soup/leftovers!
Secondly I would like to talk about the strength of the characters. Sometimes when you read a novella or a short story, you don't get the character development that you would in a full novel. The characters are almost secondary to telling the story in so few pages, but I loved Mia and Tom and their funny friends/dogs. They really stayed with me long after I had finished. Mia is a totally relatable female character but not someone who is just another clone of every other women's fiction heroine, I like my ladies a little different with an indepedner streak about them and I definitely got that with Mia. I found Tom frustrating at times but in learned to love him too!
The food, these books should definitely come with a warning, the food is seriously tempting. I found myself drinking more coffee, eating more cake and pasta and curry and everything else whilst reading these novellas. Obviously they are food themed and Mia travels to different countries to try their cuisine and experience their food culture for her blog but I didn't think I would be quite so affected by the food. The description Is second to none and you can practically see the Olive oil dripping from the pages! If you're looking for a new series to start or have a New Years resolution to read a novella between each novel you read then definitely definitely start this series now, I'm sure you're going to love it!
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