Recipe for a Perfect Wife (Brown) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[It] turns out Nellie has a lot more to teach Alice about being a wife and a woman than how to bake a good batch of cookies. The most important? Take those trappings you resent so much—cooking, gardening, bearing children—embrace them, then wield them like weapons.
Jenny Rosenstrach - New York Times Book Review


A captivating read, full of twists and turns. Brown weaves a thrilling story that parallels the lives of two characters who struggle with being strong, independent women in a patriarchal world.
Associated Press


(Starred review) Chapters alternate between Alice and Nellie…. Brown kills it; her latest is a winner so captivating that fans of modern and old-fashioned stories about women could easily read it in one day.
Library Journal


[Brown] excels at bringing the complexities of women’s lives to the page, and her latest novel questions how much has really changed for women over the last 60 years. The pacing is brisk, the characters are appealing, and both timelines are equally well realized. Thoughtful, clever, and surprisingly dark.
Booklist


With plentiful historical details (including recipes and depressingly hilarious marriage advice), the pages devoted to Nellie come to life. …An engaging and suspenseful look at how the patriarchy shaped women’s lives in the 1950s and continues to do so today.
Kirkus Reviews


Strong, well-drawn women anchor Brown's deeply thought-provoking, feminist novel. The spellbinding dual stories complement each other, raising themes of self-discovery, self-preservation and liberation for two women living eras apart.
Shelf Awareness