The Secret Ingredient – Review #books

I’ve always been a fan of a metaphor done well and although food metaphors can be overdone I just can’t help but think The Secret Ingredient is a palate cleansing kind of novel.

En route to Chicago for a blogging conference I dove into a new release from Delacorte Press by a random author I’d never heard of before. The Secret Ingredient was one of the numerous books in a surprise package sent to me by Random House a couple weeks ago. Now, getting a box full of 17 books right after your birthday, for a reader like me was the best gift ever. But by the same token getting 17 books that all look interesting is a challenge too. Which one should I choose first? 

Several of the new releases and advanced reader’s copies I received are young adult fiction. My daughter is 12 and she is a voracious reader, so I wondered if The Secret Ingredient by Stewart Lewis would be appropriate for her yet. I cracked the spine of The Secret Ingredient on the Amtrak train from Port Huron to Chicago and had it finished within four hours of the ride. The Secret Ingredient is a page-turner with a compelling plot about a young woman with two Dads (if you follow my blog thriftymommastips.com you can see why that hooked me right there, can’t you?) Olivia is a mature sixteen-year-old chef starting to wonder about her birth mother. Her Dads are both artistic and they run a restaurant in Los Angeles where Olivia cooks the specials most days. Her brother is also adopted and a wee bit of a flake with too many get rich quick schemes, an entrepreneurial spirit and musical talent to boot. Jeremy, unlike Olivia, has no inkling or desire to seek out his biological parents. 

Olivia is quite simply magnificent in her realism. Lewis breathes her onto the page effortlessly where she exists every bit as real as some of the most memorable characters from literary classics. I enjoyed this character completely, from start to finish, as she moved through her unique experience of the teenage years with eyes of an adoptee seeking to figure out various facets of her identity. Adoption plots somehow always seem to find me and this is an endless source of amusement here as I rarely pick up a book seeking to read about adoption anymore. Here adoption is a sub-plot woven consistently and evenly throughout. There is little drama and very little TV sensationalization here, which I fully appreciate. The Secret Ingredient is just a metaphor for the recipe of her life, her character and personality. Olivia wonders in a very realistic manner where her cooking talent comes from. It is her one gift not shared with anyone else in her family. She recalls all the various moments throughout school where her differences are called into question causing her to contemplate her history as an adoptee. She frames her experience against her brother’s and asks often if he ever cares to wonder where his biological parents might be. But Jeremy doesn’t seem to have a curious bone in his body.

Olivia’s two Dads are at a cross roads also, with their livelihood in jeopardy and bankruptcy imminent. Olivia’s best friend complains about her health nut of a mother until she realizes her mother has been covering an illness with a healthy eating and fitness obsession.  

The Secret Ingredient was a light, entertaining, and very well written, young adult book for the ages 14 plus. There is mild sexual activity within that I wouldn’t want my kids reading about yet. But I will shelve this one and keep it for my oldest daughter to read in a couple of years because the main character is so well done.