Season to Taste by Natalie Young

Our last meeting at Kate's old house (hopefully), we were served bucks fizz and chocolatey things, I approve of both of these things.

I'm afraid we didn't enjoy this one, it had redeeming features which I will go into later but the big minus was the content of the story.  Trying to make killing and eating your husband amusing and readable must be difficult and I admire Natalie for attempting it, but sorry, it didn't do it for us.

We were slightly confused about why Lizzie killed her husband, the book goes into years of snide comments and belittling but there didn't seem to be a trigger - or we missed it if there was.  And why did she feel the need to eat him?  Why not burn him or cook the whole lots, blitz it into soup and then pour it away?  Apart from the killing, cooking and eating, not much else happened.  The side plot of Lizzie finding a younger man (well, that didn't go well) or moving to Scotland didn't really pan out.

On to the positives!  We did enjoy the thought that must have gone into how to dismember, store, cook and eat a whole human including organs, brains and willy.  Susie called it a 'thought experiment' which I thought summed it up nicely.  I imagine this book could be a theoretical conversation in pub, getting more and more extreme as the pints are downed (the people discussing this in a pub are so obviously men, hence the pints).

Concept: 8/10
Plot: 2/10
Ending: 2/10
Cover: 5/10
Page Turner: 6/10
Who would we slap? Lizzie for being weak and generally a bit dull
Where's the cheese? No cheese, just meat
Would we recommend? 0/4 (a resounding NO)
Better as a ... documentary (with no real killing obviously)
Add a twist: Either her husband is having an affair and isn't really dead (she's making it all up) or Lizzie should kill her toy-boy in making after telling him the truth.

Total: 4/10

Our next book will be 'The Girl With All The Gifts' by M R Carey and the July meeting will be at Jen's new cake shop!