Published By: Viper
Pages: 352
Released On: 07/08/2025
he has the recipe for the perfect murder…
Maria Capello is a celebrity chef like no other. A household name with dozens of cookbooks and a weekly television show, not to mention her line of bestselling supermarket sauces. Once just the timid wife of famous chef Damien Capello, she stepped into the spotlight after his mysterious disappearance, an event she’s never spoken about publicly… until now.
Why is Maria willing to break her silence? When editor Thea Woods is invited to Maria’s remote farmhouse to work on the manuscript of her tell-all memoir, Thea spots an opportunity. She could be the one to finally learn whether the rumours are true.
Did Maria kill Damien for his recipes and the legendary ‘secret ingredient’? Or is the truth even darker?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Viper for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Oh this was soooo much fun!
It’s very much a book within a book. I thought it was going to be a straightforward thriller but it’s more involved than that. The ‘thriller’ aspect I suppose has already happened, and Thea is reading about it in this book within a book. And yet there is still a psychological edge about the present scenes.
What is most impressive is how gripping it is. Because at about 1/4 of the way through, it becomes quite reflective, with Thea trying to work things out via a manuscript, and that’s the key focus for a large chunk of the book, and you’d think that would get quite boring and monotonous but it doesn’t. You’re as gripped as she is within the context of the plot.
I wasn’t too sure about Thea as a character. I liked her on the whole, she’s been burned a few times, personally and professionally, and not always due to her own faults, but I did find her quite naïve at times, but then on the flip side she was quite brave and confrontational.
Maria was an interesting one. She has this reputation behind her, she’s basically a culinary legend, but there’s clearly more to her than this cute, grandma-looking chef. She was smart, calculating, intriguing – almost an enigma.
It is full of twists and turns and surprises, some I anticipated and some that came out of nowhere. It is a quiet thriller, more psychological, gentle, but no less impressive than an all-guns-blazing plot.
It is dark and tense and dramatic, quite…over the top in some ways, and yet subtle in others, which balances really well.
I have a copy of Danielle’s book Delicate Condition but I haven’t read it yet; it might have been bumped up my TBR list having finished this.
The chapters were longer than I like but that’s personal choice. If you like thrillers that are a bit different, but still give you everything you want from the genre, then I highly recommend it.
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