The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel

The Recipe Club follows two friends from childhood through their adult lives. Lilly is dramatic, creative, emotional; determined to live life on her terms and experience everything it has to offer. Valerie is cool, logical and fiercely devoted; excited about intellectual concepts. They meet as young girls. Lilly's father, Issac, is one of the leading psychiatrists in his field, agrophobia. Valerie's mother, Kitty, is a victim of this disease and Issac's patient. The girls experience an immediate connection and become penpals; penpals who send recipes back and forth to illustrate what is going on in their lives.

What is going on is all the wonders of growing up. Boys, education, sex, how to fit in, how to handle not fitting in, dealing with parents, dealing with friends, dealing with romance and sex, dealing with life. Each girl supplies what the other is lacking. They are not really well-matched in temperament, but together they experience and discuss it all. Until. Until a betrayal spends them apart for almost thirty years. Until they have to explore what that betrayal meant and put it in perspective to move forward in their lives.

The Recipe Club is a great book for all women. Light and breezy at times, deep and relevant at others, it charts the waters of female friendships in all their varieties. The recipes are scattered throughout and illustrate each scenario and provide their own interest. The book has it all, Humor, pain, love, hate, the yearning to connect and the need to be your own person. This book is recommended for those interested in learning more about women's lives and how to handle one of our primary relationships, that of best friend.