With Love, Chaos and Rigatoni: P Mami's Guide to the Good Life

by Jenna Holmes

Discover la dolce vita with P Mami’ s nine principles for a pleasure-filled, colourful life of love, creativity – and pasta. Jenna Holmes, known affectionately by her community as P Mami, has cultivated a lifestyle centred around extracting the most pleasure from the simplest of things. The ones readily available to us if we just open our a perfectly juicy peach, an ocean swim on a hot day, a salted margarita rim, a hyena laugh with a friend. With her trademark infectious energy, in this book Jenna shares the nine core principles that guide all the decisions she makes – big and small – to build the most creative and inspired life possible. It’ s a rollercoaster, no doubt, and with the pleasure, passion and purpose comes some pain, too. But there’ s always a rainbow in every cloud, and a plate of hot pasta to be found. With Love, Chaos and Rigatoni is a delightful quest through stories, lessons, travel tips and recipes – an invigorating invitation to locate your inner zing, P Mami-style.

256 pages, Paperback

Published February 10, 2024

Reviews

[Georgie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Visually stunning and some nice recipes at the end. Unfortunately I did not connect much with the author, finding her stories challenging to relate to. Personally I couldn’t get past the spiritual/mysticism aspect which is discussed intermittently throughout the book

[Mei Wei · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read and it’s making me want to visit Europe again! I’ve never had a slow European trip before given the number of hours to get there and the thought of spending it all to just lounge and beach?? However, I can see how it can be really recharging.

I’ve followed P Mami for a while and can relate to her honest and open sharing in this book. I can imagine most can’t relate if you haven’t gone on the journey with her way back since the stories provided little context and the spiritual journey of discovering yourself might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I have picked up and put down this book so many times as it required you to take a pause to reflect at multiple points of the book to really take advantage of the learnings from the book. You can’t just consume it at one go (something I love to do).

I don’t know if I can really take this as read but I could imagine picking this up again and again to reflect back at some of the concepts discussed.

One thing that really stuck with the cynical me is to let go and trust in the universe and it will not give you more than you can handle. If you lean into it and give, it give you back ten folds.

[Iris Jönsthövel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had its fun & intriguing stories but for me the book offered too little valuable insights because it was too personal of a storyline to really connect with it. Therefore it felt a bit too much like talking to a friend who only wants to talk about themselves & their accomplishments in a way that’s not helping me as a friend, but rather makes me feel quite discouraged.

[Jessica Min · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cheerful, energetic, colourful book brimming with life and alliteration and joy. Well worth a read for a mix of encouragement, creative infusion, business tips and most of all, a reminder to love life in all its sunshine and darkness.

P.S. a chocolate brown doggo is always a special doggo

[Anna Cleland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It came to me just as I was in a professional crisis and pondering what to do next. Jenna’s philosophy of life and her energy really spoke to me and has opened my eyes to another way of living.

[Dragana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This resonates with me so deeply as I have spent many summers in Greece! Great travel, food and life book for any woman!

[Mel Myrteza · Rating 5 out of 5]

My life motto in one book—it’s always the small things