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Roastmaster
Roastmaster is a heartwarming and emotionally tugging story about family bonds, sisters, coffee and the never-ending love of parent and child. It’s a novel about falling in love—and the different journeys life takes us on…
The seventh sister is over the moon for a Costa Rican coffee farmer. In the spring of 1984, John Mallory, the seventh sister in a coffee family dies a legend when she is uprooted from Kansas City and travels to a coffee farm in Costa Rica to become a Roastmaster. Now, eighteen years later, Capri is connected to her dead aunt through a surreal sense of smell. When Capri runs away with her boyfriend, she unearths John Mallory’s story and the myth of the Pleiades, a cluster of blue stars known as the Seven Sisters. But her quirky mother, grandfather and five aunts fear love will also lead Capri to an early grave.
A tale for those who know magic can be found in the bean of a fruit.
Roastmaster was a Novello Literary Award Finalist
The seventh sister is over the moon for a Costa Rican coffee farmer. In the spring of 1984, John Mallory, the seventh sister in a coffee family dies a legend when she is uprooted from Kansas City and travels to a coffee farm in Costa Rica to become a Roastmaster. Now, eighteen years later, Capri is connected to her dead aunt through a surreal sense of smell. When Capri runs away with her boyfriend, she unearths John Mallory’s story and the myth of the Pleiades, a cluster of blue stars known as the Seven Sisters. But her quirky mother, grandfather and five aunts fear love will also lead Capri to an early grave.
A tale for those who know magic can be found in the bean of a fruit.
Roastmaster was a Novello Literary Award Finalist
- GenresFictionMagical Realism
345 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 2014
5 people are currently reading
887 people want to read
About the author
Janice Lierz
2 books8 followersJanice Lierz dreamt of being a traveling troubadour but instead took a (maybe not so) daring path into the consumer products world. During those decades, she climbed ladders at Johnson & Johnson/McNeil CPC, Heublein, Pillsbury, Frito-Lay/PepsiCo and Whole Foods Market, where she was the president of several subsidiaries. She now spends her time with her gaggle of family and pets in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she studies Botany, consults with businesses and entrepreneurs, and is writing her next novel.
She has a long family history with coffee and was inspired to write her first novel while visiting coffee farms in Costa Rica.
Please visit Janice at www.JaniceLierz.com
She has a long family history with coffee and was inspired to write her first novel while visiting coffee farms in Costa Rica.
Please visit Janice at www.JaniceLierz.com
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 24, 2014
I loved this story!! As much an experience as it is a narrative, this book brings places and people to life on its pages with gorgeous, vivid imagery! The author speaks with compassion about the universal struggle of self-definition. I related to Capri's impulses to resist expectations placed on her from family and society, as well as her changes of perspective. I liked the honest representations of growth and uncertainty in the characters. Their humanity provided a real sense of connection to situations that evoke strong emotions. If you like strong female characters, exotic locales, and, of course, coffee, you'll love it, too!! I recommend it 100%!
November 7, 2025
I read this book while on a reading retreat in Costa Rica! I was a perfect complement to my trip! I learned about Costa Rica, coffee, family relationships and more! I would have never discovered this book had I not been going to Costa Rica, but I’m glad I did!
November 20, 2023
✦ 4.25 stars ✦
i can’t believe this book has so few readers!! i’m so smitten with this story.
roastmaster is for kitchen witches, coffee lovers, pleiades enjoyers, and romantic environmentalists. the prose is buttery, lyrical, full-bodied. the narrative is fueled by a magical, powerful nose, so there are rolling paragraphs describing enchanting scents, painting pictures with our delicate “third” sense. i’m a sucker for a verbose, painting-with-words narrative, and i felt that roastmaster had a nice balance of dialogue and character development alongside the decadent descriptors. i found myself intrigued by the reincarnation-meets-destined-myth overarching storyline.
just like coffee, this book holds an invigorating magic that compels and inspires. an energy mover. i left this book feeling a lil more present, grateful. i love coffee magic SO much. i had lots of lattes reading through this. all hail the mother bean!
i wish i had my shit together as much as john mallory. she's just.... so kool (with a k). honestly, i appreciated most of the characters, flaws n all. capri and mac made quite the duo.
my one ’grievance’ (which is a strong word, because it didn’t really ruin anything): the last 5% of the book had me blinking. like… yeah. okay. weird. but kinda checks out? simply because life is chaos. and the final aesop is just so tender and sweet and enchanting in spite of the eyebrow raise/giggle. i’ll accept it.
if the empress major arcana were a novel, she would move just like roastmaster; enchanting, exotic, ever-so-slightly heady, falling in love with love, spinning in circles barefoot in a costa rican jungle, surrounded by plantains and tamarinds and sunset-hued orchids. so thankful that i stumbled upon this lil gem of a story. ☕️
i can’t believe this book has so few readers!! i’m so smitten with this story.
roastmaster is for kitchen witches, coffee lovers, pleiades enjoyers, and romantic environmentalists. the prose is buttery, lyrical, full-bodied. the narrative is fueled by a magical, powerful nose, so there are rolling paragraphs describing enchanting scents, painting pictures with our delicate “third” sense. i’m a sucker for a verbose, painting-with-words narrative, and i felt that roastmaster had a nice balance of dialogue and character development alongside the decadent descriptors. i found myself intrigued by the reincarnation-meets-destined-myth overarching storyline.
just like coffee, this book holds an invigorating magic that compels and inspires. an energy mover. i left this book feeling a lil more present, grateful. i love coffee magic SO much. i had lots of lattes reading through this. all hail the mother bean!
i wish i had my shit together as much as john mallory. she's just.... so kool (with a k). honestly, i appreciated most of the characters, flaws n all. capri and mac made quite the duo.
my one ’grievance’ (which is a strong word, because it didn’t really ruin anything): the last 5% of the book had me blinking. like… yeah. okay. weird. but kinda checks out? simply because life is chaos. and the final aesop is just so tender and sweet and enchanting in spite of the eyebrow raise/giggle. i’ll accept it.
if the empress major arcana were a novel, she would move just like roastmaster; enchanting, exotic, ever-so-slightly heady, falling in love with love, spinning in circles barefoot in a costa rican jungle, surrounded by plantains and tamarinds and sunset-hued orchids. so thankful that i stumbled upon this lil gem of a story. ☕️
July 15, 2014
This book is lovely--there's no other word to perfectly describe it than that. If I were to describe it like coffee, it would be full-bodied and strong with hints of fruity scents, like apple or strawberry, after a few sips. The characters are very much alive, like they're someone you know intimately. It is in the way that they are written that draws you to them, their conflicts and struggles in defining their own place in the world. The parallel tales of John and Capri are interesting as their lives are woven together in intimate detail. In the end, I've read the book, I get a hopeful feeling, a renewed sense to life, a vigor that's very much like the way you would feel after you have a perfectly brewed coffee on a fine day. It reads like that.
January 3, 2015
This is an amazing book about family and love and magic and how reality and myths can meet. I loved reading this book and I couldn't put it down! I loved the character of John Mallory and how she went to Costa Rica and met her true love and discovered the ways of coffee. The family she stayed with was amazing. I wish I could go to Costa Rica now too and discover the magic there! I highly recommend this book!
*I won this book through Goodreads First Reads*
*I won this book through Goodreads First Reads*
January 25, 2015
This book by Lierz was a very unusual novel. I learned a lot about the coffee business that I did not know. In fact it was a little difficult for me in the middle to keep going but am I so happy that I did. Whatever you do make sure that you finish this book, it is well worth your time and the investment you make in it.
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" and "To Whom It May Concern"
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" and "To Whom It May Concern"
September 30, 2014
I received a copy of Roastmaster by Janice Lierz from Goodreads and I could almost summarize it in one word: Lovely. This is a beautiful story about love and family and coming of age. It is about values and self-respect, and it is about coffee. This is a perfect mother-daughter or book club read. It takes what is mundane and makes it divine. Lovely.
February 15, 2025
Lovely book. Great story. Love the magical realism. I agree with another reviewer: not sure why it hasn't gained more exposure. Guess it's just the reading/publishing world we live in! I certainly recommend.
August 25, 2014
I found Roastmaster lovely, lyrical, mystical, magical, and totally engaging -- the things I enjoy most in a story. I highly recommend this book.
December 23, 2023
The different timelines were confusing, especially with two characters having the same name. I'm not sure why we had to go back and forth other than because that's how novels are written these days. Also, there were several passages that made little sense, some because of what the characters were doing and others because the writing made no sense.
February 9, 2025
This was not my typical choice and had a hard time getting into it or the characters. I started to become more invested about halfway through but really struggled with the author's words and point of view from the characters.
November 18, 2025
I am in Costa Rica and wanted a fiction set here. This did not disappoint. I took me a while to discern who was who and when, but once I got it, I was hooked by the storyline. I thought the magical realism worked most of the time and other times it distracted, was a bit disjointed. Elevating the natural world to its proper place of reverence was great. I enjoyed the book.
July 18, 2014
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(There will be spoilers).
I'll have to admit, the style of this novel wasn't quite for me, though it might work for other people. If you read the beginning and enjoy it, you'll probably enjoy the rest of the book.
The changing of tenses was jarring for me. Not only did chapters switch from past tense to present tense, but then there would also be a spattering of "this would happen, that would happen" thrown in there. Sometimes we'd start a chapter with Capri sitting around in present tense and suddenly be talking about something she did last week/month/year. I get what the author was going for with "Capri" being the current story and "John Mallory" being the story from the past, but I wish the tenses had been kept the same.
If this book were a piece of art, I'd say it's an "abstract painting". Sometimes things make sense in it, and other times it has the most bizarre descriptions of what's going on. With how often Machu was described as having a big round head like the moon I could have easily pictured moon from Majora's Mask sitting atop his neck.
There were odd things like, "She looked up as if she saw a morpho blue butterfly" (just an example based on my memory, it might not be written exactly like that). It left me wondering if there's a specific way people are supposed to look when they see a morpho blue butterfly. At parts it was very confusing.
In much the same way, sometimes the dialogue was very strange and it would be hard to imagine people actually talking like that.
That said, that doesn't mean this is a bad book. There's definitely an interesting story there. John Mallory's transition from American life to life in Costa Rica was done pretty well. I was actually convinced she didn't want to leave by the end. A lot of the characters are likeable, and they weren't stuck in a state of "having to do everything right" or "having to do everything wrong". Everyone was all over the place in doing right and wrong.
My best suggestion would be to read a preview and see if it's a style you like, because it keeps the same style throughout.
(There will be spoilers).
I'll have to admit, the style of this novel wasn't quite for me, though it might work for other people. If you read the beginning and enjoy it, you'll probably enjoy the rest of the book.
The changing of tenses was jarring for me. Not only did chapters switch from past tense to present tense, but then there would also be a spattering of "this would happen, that would happen" thrown in there. Sometimes we'd start a chapter with Capri sitting around in present tense and suddenly be talking about something she did last week/month/year. I get what the author was going for with "Capri" being the current story and "John Mallory" being the story from the past, but I wish the tenses had been kept the same.
If this book were a piece of art, I'd say it's an "abstract painting". Sometimes things make sense in it, and other times it has the most bizarre descriptions of what's going on. With how often Machu was described as having a big round head like the moon I could have easily pictured moon from Majora's Mask sitting atop his neck.
There were odd things like, "She looked up as if she saw a morpho blue butterfly" (just an example based on my memory, it might not be written exactly like that). It left me wondering if there's a specific way people are supposed to look when they see a morpho blue butterfly. At parts it was very confusing.
In much the same way, sometimes the dialogue was very strange and it would be hard to imagine people actually talking like that.
That said, that doesn't mean this is a bad book. There's definitely an interesting story there. John Mallory's transition from American life to life in Costa Rica was done pretty well. I was actually convinced she didn't want to leave by the end. A lot of the characters are likeable, and they weren't stuck in a state of "having to do everything right" or "having to do everything wrong". Everyone was all over the place in doing right and wrong.
My best suggestion would be to read a preview and see if it's a style you like, because it keeps the same style throughout.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2014
Beautiful, caressing writing, almost the whole book is like poetry. Here are some enticing samples:
"I need you. Can you please come here, so I can have a word with you?"
"I can," her mother says, "I'm certainly able. But will I?" Her aunts giggle in the background, offering a round of approval with her mother's grammatical correction.
"Come on, I need you real bad," Capri says, trying to sound desperate.
"Never fear, we are bad," Aunt Celia says, singing too. "You need her badly."
Just what Capri needs, all of them grammar hammered.
* * * * *
In Costa Rica, men lusted for land. They coaxed it like a hesitant lover. They gave offerings. Their fingers caressed its skin and fed it sweat, dining it with hard work and love songs.
* * * * *
Ultimately, for me, which such poetry is beautiful, it would be for readers of poetry. I appreciate such elaborate, intricate writing in a book with a great plot. Here, I would have to see more of a plot, and less of such descriptive writing. I'd admit, though, the evocative writing kept me going, even while I was not sure what was going on. It did creep into the dialogue, though, making this book more like a "theatre" or like "magic realism." "Coffee books" still invoke images unto us of large, photograph-laden hardcover books designed for brief fascination with images on a table in a living room; this seems similar, but with fancy prose. It does work for the reader who wants to meander, to relax, to sample a bit at a time.
The tragic event recounted at the very ending didn't seem to tie in to the general theme of the book. It seemed like a random, throw-away thing.
It was interesting learning about the means of identifying chocolate and cocoa beans in the jungle. (Now -- cocoa -- that's my drug of choice!)
One tiny peeve: a man's name was used for the main character in the book, who is a woman. I don't mind it for a secondary character, but seeing the man's name, over and over, for the main character kind of grated on my nerves. Thank goodness for the evocative writing to soothe my reader's muse.
"I need you. Can you please come here, so I can have a word with you?"
"I can," her mother says, "I'm certainly able. But will I?" Her aunts giggle in the background, offering a round of approval with her mother's grammatical correction.
"Come on, I need you real bad," Capri says, trying to sound desperate.
"Never fear, we are bad," Aunt Celia says, singing too. "You need her badly."
Just what Capri needs, all of them grammar hammered.
* * * * *
In Costa Rica, men lusted for land. They coaxed it like a hesitant lover. They gave offerings. Their fingers caressed its skin and fed it sweat, dining it with hard work and love songs.
* * * * *
Ultimately, for me, which such poetry is beautiful, it would be for readers of poetry. I appreciate such elaborate, intricate writing in a book with a great plot. Here, I would have to see more of a plot, and less of such descriptive writing. I'd admit, though, the evocative writing kept me going, even while I was not sure what was going on. It did creep into the dialogue, though, making this book more like a "theatre" or like "magic realism." "Coffee books" still invoke images unto us of large, photograph-laden hardcover books designed for brief fascination with images on a table in a living room; this seems similar, but with fancy prose. It does work for the reader who wants to meander, to relax, to sample a bit at a time.
The tragic event recounted at the very ending didn't seem to tie in to the general theme of the book. It seemed like a random, throw-away thing.
It was interesting learning about the means of identifying chocolate and cocoa beans in the jungle. (Now -- cocoa -- that's my drug of choice!)
One tiny peeve: a man's name was used for the main character in the book, who is a woman. I don't mind it for a secondary character, but seeing the man's name, over and over, for the main character kind of grated on my nerves. Thank goodness for the evocative writing to soothe my reader's muse.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 3, 2014
I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads contest.
It is a solid 3 1/2 star book in my mind. Why?
It has a lot of magical realism and I am not entirely sure it works in a solid way in the plot. The interactions between Capri and her aunts just seems..weird. Not magical or totally involving, just weird. I instantly went into the book knowing the characters were totally mentally unstable because of the interactions peppered with the magical realism.
The magical realism also made the first meeting between John Mallroy and Manchu very awkward. I couldn't figure out why they were attracted to one another and it seemed really quick in a forced way. The magical realism made me feel it was super creepy, especially since the description of Manchu was very simian. I kept going "Yuck. This Manchu guy is too monkey to be attractive. Why does she like him." So, I am thinking the magical realism aspect really did this relationship in the book a disservice.
Still, the book had so many beautiful turns of phrase and visuals in it. It kept me reading to the end and I am glad I gave it a chance. It wasn't a horrible book. It was a solid read with some minor aspects to the style that held it back a little in my mind. It is definitely worth giving a read and seeing if it is to your tastes.
It is a solid 3 1/2 star book in my mind. Why?
It has a lot of magical realism and I am not entirely sure it works in a solid way in the plot. The interactions between Capri and her aunts just seems..weird. Not magical or totally involving, just weird. I instantly went into the book knowing the characters were totally mentally unstable because of the interactions peppered with the magical realism.
The magical realism also made the first meeting between John Mallroy and Manchu very awkward. I couldn't figure out why they were attracted to one another and it seemed really quick in a forced way. The magical realism made me feel it was super creepy, especially since the description of Manchu was very simian. I kept going "Yuck. This Manchu guy is too monkey to be attractive. Why does she like him." So, I am thinking the magical realism aspect really did this relationship in the book a disservice.
Still, the book had so many beautiful turns of phrase and visuals in it. It kept me reading to the end and I am glad I gave it a chance. It wasn't a horrible book. It was a solid read with some minor aspects to the style that held it back a little in my mind. It is definitely worth giving a read and seeing if it is to your tastes.
September 5, 2014
Liked it but found myself scratching my head here and there and I have to admit, I wasn't as interested in Capri as I was in John! It was quirky but when I read anything with a hint of magical realism I always hope for it to be in the vein of Joanne Harris and Alice Hoffman; I know this is completely unfair to writers, but there you go.
It was different and sensual but at times I felt like I was reading a book for teenagers instead. All the aunts sort of blended into one mass, which I suppose is sort of the point. I need to think more on this book before finishing my review.
It was different and sensual but at times I felt like I was reading a book for teenagers instead. All the aunts sort of blended into one mass, which I suppose is sort of the point. I need to think more on this book before finishing my review.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews