Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown

Recipe for a Perfect Wife
released December 31, 2019 from Viking

[Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review]


Recipe for a Perfect Wife is the perfect tongue-in-cheek title for this novel full of vintage recipes, quotes, and antidotes. After finding an old cookbook and letters in the basement of her new house, adrift Alice finds inspiration for her nonexistent novel. By losing herself in the snippets of 1950s housewife Nellie's life, Alice simultaneously ignores some residual problems from her previous job and escapes the minutia of her new suburban life. I loved that this novel showed a bit of what could have been/could be going on behind closed doors in regards to reproductive issues, domestic abuse, and female power, in the past and today. 


Goodreads Summary:
When Alice Hale reluctantly leaves a promising career in publicity, following her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. However, she is determined to become a writer--and to work hard to build the kind of life her husband dreams of, complete with children.

At first, the old house seems to resent Alice as much as she resents it, but when she finds an old cookbook buried in a box in the basement, she becomes captivated by the cookbook's previous owner: 1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she begins to settle into her new surroundings, even as her friends and family grow concerned that she has embraced them too fully: wearing vintage dresses and pearls like a 1950s housewife, making elaborate old-fashioned dishes like Baked Alaska, and drifting steadily away from her usual pursuits.

Alice justifies the changes merely as research for her novel...but when she discovers that Nellie left clues about her own life within the cookbook's pages--and in a mysterious series of unsent letters penned to Nellie's mother--she quickly realizes that the housewife's secrets may have been anything but harmless. As she uncovers a more sinister side to Nellie's marriage and with pressure mounting in her own relationship, Alice realizes that to protect herself she must harbour and hatch a few secrets of her own...