Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune

by Roselle Lim

Lush and visual, chock-full of delicious recipes, Roselle Lim’s magical debut novel is about food, heritage, and finding family in the most unexpected places.  

At the news of her mother’s death, Natalie Tan returns home. The two women hadn’t spoken since Natalie left in anger seven years ago, when her mother refused to support her chosen career as a chef. Natalie is shocked to discover the vibrant neighborhood of San Francisco’s Chinatown that she remembers from her childhood is fading, with businesses failing and families moving out. She’s even more surprised to learn she has inherited her grandmother’s restaurant. 

The neighborhood seer reads the restaurant’s fortune in the leaves: Natalie must cook three recipes from her grandmother’s cookbook to aid her struggling neighbors before the restaurant will succeed. Unfortunately, Natalie has no desire to help them try to turn things around—she resents the local shopkeepers for leaving her alone to take care of her agoraphobic mother when she was growing up. But with the support of a surprising new friend and a budding romance, Natalie starts to realize that maybe her neighbors really have been there for her all along.

• ISBN10: 1984803255
• ISBN13: 9781984803252
• Publish Date: 11 June 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Berkley Publishing Corporation,U.S.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781984803252

Reviews

[Heather]

I recently read this author's second book, Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop, and loved it so I grabbed this one from the library.

This book also features food and magical realism but they are standalone novels and you can read them in either order.

I felt like I had to work to suspend disbelief a little more in this book. It wasn't the magical realism that bothered me. It was economics.

Natalie's grandmother was an immigrant who ran a two table restaurant in San Francisco. She managed to buy the building the restaurant and their apartment was in. It isn't clear if this was before or after she started the restaurant. How did she get the money? Ok, I can live with that. Maybe SF real estate prices weren't so high. But then, her mother shut down the restaurant and lived there with a child and no visible means of support. She didn't go out. She didn't have a job. Even if the building was paid for, how was she affording the taxes?

Also, Natalie wanted to be a chef. There was a whole restaurant on the first floor of her house and she'd never seen it until she came home after her mother died. You know a nosy kid would have used it as a place to play or hide or just checked it out from curiosity - especially a kid who wants to be a chef. If she and her mother fought about her being a chef a lot, how was "We have an empty restaurant right below our feet, Mom!" never brought up? It appears to have never occurred to her to use that space before.

I guess I'm being too practical about a story that features magical recipes. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Other than that the story was fun. She gets her grandmother's recipe book and needs to figure out if the magic that came through these recipes was just from her grandmother or if they would work for her too. One plot point I liked is that after having the blow up fight with her mother over culinary school, she flunked out. Then Natalie had to consider that maybe her mother was correct. I don't see that a lot in books. Usually the kid storms off to prove their parents wrong and everything goes great for them.
This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

[bookperson]

DNF

[empressbrooke]

I didn't expect it from the synopsis, but this book is really, really simple. Everything from the writing style to the characters to the plot lacks depth. The sentence structure is uniformly very simple and the main character relates actions and feelings in very perfunctory statements. The plot sounds like it could be very interesting - it promises heavy topics like family estrangements and mental illness and gentrification - but every conflict is resolved smoothly and quickly. I suppose that this would work well for someone who wants something very light and easy to read, but I wanted much more to sink my teeth into. It wasn't for me but it could be for someone else.

[Rowena]

I felt like I was reading this book for forever and really, it was just a couple of days. I didn't connect with the main character as much as I thought or even hoped that I would and this one moved slow in a lot of places. It was really easy for me to put this book down to do other things. I did enjoy the food stuff though I wanted more from the little itty bitty romance that we got.

[Sam@WLABB]

Natalie returned home following her mother's death to plan the funeral, and tie up some loose ends. It was supposed to be her goodbye tour of the neighborhood, but she was taken aback to find the once vibrant and flourishing community in dire need of revitalization, and apparently, Natalie was the key to bringing it back to life.

This was such a lovely and feel-good read, and I was happy to be part of Natalie's journey as she found her way back to her roots and herself. There were so many things to praise in this book, and here are five things I loved about Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune.

1. The Food! - I am warning you right now - do NOT read this book on an empty stomach. Lim's love of cooking and culinary delights shines on these pages. She engaged all my senses with her vivid descriptions and full recipes. She included many dishes I have had the pleasure of tasting and even more I hope to taste.

2. The Community - Natalie's family was lucky to have landed in this neighborhood, because it was filled with so many wonderful and caring people. It was a delight getting to know all the denizens of this street, and it was beautiful the way they all bonded together to help first, Natalie's mother, and then, Natalie herself. I got some serious warm-fuzzies being around this bunch.

3. The Tan Women - Learning about Natalie's mother and grandmother gave me hope for her. She was the product of such strong women, and I knew she would find her inner strength to get through this situation, because she had such stellar role models, who had overcome adversity.

4. Chinese Culture - Lim did such a fantastic job weaving the cultural aspects into the story, and I really enjoyed learning more about Chinese customs and traditions.

5. Natalie's Personal Journey - Natalie had been untethered for quite some time, and she struggled with making permanent connections. It was wonderful seeing her find herself by digging into her history and also, uncovering some family secrets. With each additional bit she learned, I saw her eyes and her heart opening wider and wider, and the end result was stellar.

Overall, this was a heartwarming tale of love, loss, family, community, and food served up with lots of heart and a dash of magic.

*ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

BLOG | INSTAGRAM |TWITTER | BLOGLOVIN | FRIEND ME ON GOODREADS

[layawaydragon]

Hmmmmm. I don't quite know how to feel about this one. I finished it. I enjoyed parts of it. The food sounded delicious. I love the community aspect coming together. The romance was instant and hardly surprising. Felt slow and long. Not all that exciting. I do appreciate having a heroine with a major character flaw that's typically male with a solution beyond finding “The One”.

I mean, it is good and I can see recommending it to others. I’m just not particularly attached to it one way or the other. 

Recommended for fans of magical realism, slow pacing with character driven introspection, and detailed cooking.

[Kat @ Novels & Waffles]

💛The Full review can be found here.💛

"Listen to their problems and then cook for them."

Things I Liked:

✑ An #ownvoices story that highlights the beauty of Chinese culture
✑ ALL THE FOOOD!
✑ Emotionally raw and heartfelt
✑ The magical realism was, well… magical

Things I Liked... Less:

✑ The storytelling felt a bit disjointed at times
✑ The romance was too much, too fast, and too cheesy

---------------------------------------------
Novels & Waffles Blog・Twitter・Instagram・Bloglovin'

[girlinthepages]

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*Thank you so much to Berkley Books and NetGalley for providing a free review copy in exchange for an honest review*

From the moment I heard of Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune, I KNEW I had to read it. Set in San Francisco, centered around food, with a dash of magical realism? Yes, please! Then the cover was released and was (and is!) absolutely adorable, and once I saw it on NetGalley I hit that "request" button SO FAST. Though not slated for release until June, I eagerly started the book in February and found it to be a heartwarming story perfect for the dreary winter weather.

The novel follows Natalie, an almost thirty year old who returns to her home town in San Francisco after her mother's death, which hits her especially hard as she hasn't spoken to her mother in several years after a falling out and now must pick up the pieces of her old life and come to terms with community that she fled from all of those years ago in order to pursue her dream of becoming a chef. At first Natalie is bitter, assuming her neighbors were selfish and unhelpful, ignoring her mother's agoraphobia (causing her to be too scared to ever leave her apartment) and leaving her and her mother to fend for themselves for decades. Yet as she goes through the process of burying her mother and deciding what to do with her family's abandoned restaurant, she realizes that she too is complicit in her strained relationship with both her mother and her community. After discovering her grandmother's old recipe book, Natalie attempts to heal many of the anxieties and wounds facing the community through cooking.

There's many things that this novel does exceptionally well. It explores and explains Natalie's Chinese heritage and customs, and touches upon the immigrant experience in San Francisco and the looming issue of gentrification that Chinatown faces in modern times. It juxtaposes the desires of different generations and what the "American Dream" means to each woman in the Tan family. It weaves in threads and hints of magic that are just subtle enough to be believed as real, such as Natalie collecting tears, visible manifestations of emotion that appear in golden threads, fireworks, and other symbols when people eat, and a magical cookbook that contains recipes not just to satisfy the stomach but the soul as well. I loved the way magic was tied in with spirituality in this story as well, and how Natalie was able to honor her family through both rituals and dreams and communicate with them on a level outside of just the physical- there's a slight supernatural layer to the story that never feels out of place, but rather enhances the emotions and relationships that are presented.

While I loved meeting the cast of neighborhood characters and admiring Natalie's mouthwatering concoctions (there are even recipes included, straight from her grandmother's cookbook!) there were a few elements of the novel that felt underdeveloped to me. Natalie's main passion in life is cooking and it's so deeply rooted in her family history and personal narrative, yet sometimes it had to compete with a random love of music that would pop up. The connection to between her and music receives some clarity toward the end of the book, and of course people can have multiple interests and hobbies, however it did feel like the cooking and musical elements were competing for screen time and her interest in music didn't feel very authentic aside from her telling the reader how much she enjoyed listening to different instruments and soundtracks. There was also a romance side plot, which I wasn't surprised by, but it felt underdeveloped and either needed more page time or could have been cut entirely (which would have been fine, considering there's so many other important non-romanctic relationships featured in this story).

Overall: Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune is a heart and stomach warming story that combines the healing power of food with the importance of family and community. I felt happy and content upon finishing it and will definitely be checking out future books by this debut author!This review was originally posted on Girl in the Pages