Predictable foodie rom-com

As the sweet aromas of freshly-baked bread awaken memories of her apprenticeship at a French boulangerie, she feels the desire and ambition to bake bread once again.

Bread, in this novel, is a metaphor for life, healing and finding oneself.

Food fiction can be fun, if one likes food and recipes. Much of the novel is also set in the lovely Seattle neighbourhood of Queen Anne, and there is a pleasant sense of Seattle before it was discovered and gentrified by the tech world.

So much for the good. The problem with this novel is the characters, the completely predictable plot, and the unimaginative writing.

At the start of the novel, Wynter Franklin is 31 years old. She had once been a teacher, but despised the job. She drifts into a relationship with the handsome man, gets married, and falls easily into a lifestyle where she gives up her job and spends her days wining and dining his business colleagues. Her life of luxury falls apart when he dumps her, and she sinks into a clingy, resentful, misery. Until she moves to Seattle and starts work in a bakery and rediscovers her love of bread-baking, and thence, herself.

It is unfortunate that Wynter is such an self-absorbed, unappealing protagonist that it’s difficult to maintain an interest in her life. For about half of the book she pines after her two-timing husband. She is immediately rude to any man she meets (none of whom live up to her adored father.)

[A bartender] “God, you’re soaked.”

[Wynter] “You have a gift for stating the obvious.”

She is fat-phobic, and makes some nasty comments about other women.

A woman whose rear end resembles a plaid double-wide trailer […]

[…] tossed her faux red hair back

Her smile revealed so many gleaming white teeth, I felt like I was in an appliance showroom in front of a row of refrigerators.

[…] women who appear to be ten years younger than me, probably all named Heather or Fawn or Tiffany.

She despises children and hated her past job as a teacher. She doesn’t have a job, and looks down her nose at most occupations:

one of their piddly indentured servant office jobs.

The novel is written from her point of view, so the reader is privy to her inner thoughts, but these are boringly repetitive in addition to being off putting.

This is the kind of novel in which it is taken for granted that the height of sophistication is to be French, to speak French, to pronounce French properly, and to eat French food. Preferably in Paris, where the men are all extremely handsome and the women are beautiful, and their accents are all charming.

Jean-Marc called me “Weentaire” in his wonderful French voice.

“Was Jean-Marc gorgeous?” [asked Diane].

“But of course. He was French.”

Most [French women] were pretty, but even those who weren’t managed to be attractive simply by being French. They could wear jeans and a T-shirt […] and look like something out of Vogue.

This gets old pretty quickly, but Wyn’s French sojourn is returned to over and over again, with little interludes scattered through the book, each viewed through a gloriously rosy, unimaginative, unquestioning prism.

Parts of the novel are set in LA, but the better sections are set in Seattle. The people are more complex and interesting:

Ellen wears long dresses and Doc Martens and wire-rimmed glasses that keep sliding down her nose while she’s waiting on people, and she must know every single person within a ten-block radius.

A punked-out kid named Tyler is the espresso barista. She’s got blue hair and a nose ring, a tattoo of some Celtic knot design encircling her wrist.

1990s Seattle is also depicted fairly well, if not with sentences that would stay in your memory.

I wander out onto one of the wooden piers. Scents of creosote and diesel fuel merge in my nostrils with the iodine smell of seawater. Across the bay, the cranes and container ships of the working port look like an animated cartoon.

The Washington State ferries chug to and fro from Bainbridge Island through swarms of bright spinnakers. When the sun falls into that slot behind the mountains, the wind picks up and the temperature drops, but it’s worth the cold walk home to see the Olympics catch fire in the sunset.

I’d let you guess whether Wynter finds love, but as I said, the plot is completely predictable. Even if you’re looking for a recipe for espresso-caramel sauce or pumpkin-millet muffins, you’ll have to plough through many pages of Wynter’s Woes, so skip this one.