Recipe for Scandal

by Debby Holt

[Leah]

Twenty years after her husband Ed dies in a car accident, Alberta Granger finally feels as if her life is stable. She has two fantastic children and has been with Tony for almost twenty years. Alberta’s daughter, Hannah, also feels as if her life is great: she has a fab job in London, she has great friends and an even better boyfriend. Phillipa, Alberta’s mother, has an idyllic life, living with her former Government minister husband and the only thing that concerns her is the greenfly on her roses. However when Phillipa’s husband dies in dubious circumstances, all three women's lives are about to change. As scandal upon scandal comes out of the woodwork, do the three women have what it takes to come out of the whole thing stronger?

Until I read Recipe For Scandal, the only other Debby Holt book I’ve read was Annie May’s Black Book which I quite enjoyed. I was looking on Amazon for other Debby Holt titles and saw that her newest book would be Recipe For Scandal. The cover really caught my eye, so I eagerly had a look at the synopsis and liked the sound of it. Having a lot of spare time over Christmas I decided to give it a read.

The opening of the book seemed to be very distant. For the first 70 or so pages I didn’t feel anything for the characters and it was written in such a style that I couldn’t learn anything from the characters themselves apart from what I was told. I perservered with the book as it wasn’t bad and I found that as the book wore on, I did feel more for the characters and I did find the plot more interesting. It takes just over 100 pages for the main plot to start so that could be what attributed to my dislike of the beginning of the novel. After Alberta’s father dies, the plot picks up the pace and I found myself really getting into the book.

As I mentioned, it took 100 pages for me to really get into the characters. The only character I remotely liked before Alberta’s dad died was Jacob, Alberta’s precocious son. I found his insights interesting and he was an enjoyable character. It was a pity he disappeared after that, off travelling with his girlfriend. His insights as all of the scandals broke would have made for very interesting reading indeed! Alberta for most part of the book was our main character and the book was mostly narrated from her point of view. It took me a while to really like Alberta, but I did feel so sympathetic for her after her father dies and all of the scandals start coming out. The book is also told from Hannah and Marma’s points of view, Alberta’s daughter and mother respectively and I really liked both Hannah and Marma. A lot of secrets are revealed about Marma, some not so pleasant, but I liked her the entire time. The only other main character was Tony, Alberta’s partner who seemed nice enough.

The scandals in question aren’t so scandalous in this day and age – after all, there are scandals coming out left, right and center about politicians and their dirty little secrets every single day. I can, however, see how they were scandalous to Alberta and her family. Debby Holt’s books are seemingly about well-off-ish families who seem to have an air about them, so Alberta and her family would find the death of Lord Trussler rather scandalous. I also suppose that how scandalous the revelations are depend on your interpretation of the word scandal and how something like Lord Trussler’s death ranks on your scandal scale. Debby’s writing is really quite good. After Lord Trussler dies I was sucked in quite easily and I was eager to see how everything would settle once the scandalous revelations died down. The book was a little slow-paced at times but that wasn’t really a huge problem. It suited the style of the book.

The ending surprised me. I figured it was going to end one way and it ended a completely different way. I think I preferred the ending that happened rather than the ending I thought I wanted, it was quite cleverley done by Debby to make me change my mind about how I wanted the book to end. Recipe For Scandal was a very enjoyable read, and you really should persevere for the first 100 or so pages, however it’s probably one you can only read the once. I don’t think it could be one I’d read again and again. It is well worth a read though!