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Like Wafers in Honey: A Novel
This debut novel from food writer Leah Eskin of the Chicago Times combines the historical sweep and emotional power of The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer and the resonant use of food and recipes of Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.
The story opens on the mountaintop city of Pitigliano, Italy, once called Little Jerusalem for its vibrant, centuries-old Jewish community. But the year is 1943. Mussolini has enacted anti-Jewish laws across Italy, and the family of Stella Fortuna struggles to maintain any sense of their former life. Then one night a neighbor comes to their door holding a ricotta pudding, and tells them “You must leave now. You’re in grave danger.” The Nazi’s have arrived to help the Fascists of Italy enact their own Final Solution.
Grabbing what few things they can carry (and the pudding), Stella Fortuna escapes into the woods below Pitigliano with her two older brothers and younger sister, Marcella. What follows is a desperate months-long flight. Precarious stays with sympathetic, but fearful families in the countryside, dodging the ever-closer Fascists in pursuit while Stella dreams of romance, the comforts of home, and the food that was not just her mother’s it was the delicious expression of an entire culture in danger.
In a separate timeline, Edda Servi Machlin is a housewife in 1960s Westchester trying to make sense of a new culture, and the “spaghetti and meatballs” food that passes for Italian cuisine. With caustic wit, we see twentieth-century America through an immigrant’s eyes, someone who can never return to her former home, because it no longer exists. Someone who comes to understand that it might be up to her to preserve the indelible flavors of a Jewish-Italian way of life that is in danger of extinction, as her family once was.
In between these two remarkable stories are more than forty recipes (updated for today's cooks), all inspired by the life and example of Edda Servi Machlin, author of The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews.
The delectable taste of this novel will linger with readers, even when the book is closed.
The story opens on the mountaintop city of Pitigliano, Italy, once called Little Jerusalem for its vibrant, centuries-old Jewish community. But the year is 1943. Mussolini has enacted anti-Jewish laws across Italy, and the family of Stella Fortuna struggles to maintain any sense of their former life. Then one night a neighbor comes to their door holding a ricotta pudding, and tells them “You must leave now. You’re in grave danger.” The Nazi’s have arrived to help the Fascists of Italy enact their own Final Solution.
Grabbing what few things they can carry (and the pudding), Stella Fortuna escapes into the woods below Pitigliano with her two older brothers and younger sister, Marcella. What follows is a desperate months-long flight. Precarious stays with sympathetic, but fearful families in the countryside, dodging the ever-closer Fascists in pursuit while Stella dreams of romance, the comforts of home, and the food that was not just her mother’s it was the delicious expression of an entire culture in danger.
In a separate timeline, Edda Servi Machlin is a housewife in 1960s Westchester trying to make sense of a new culture, and the “spaghetti and meatballs” food that passes for Italian cuisine. With caustic wit, we see twentieth-century America through an immigrant’s eyes, someone who can never return to her former home, because it no longer exists. Someone who comes to understand that it might be up to her to preserve the indelible flavors of a Jewish-Italian way of life that is in danger of extinction, as her family once was.
In between these two remarkable stories are more than forty recipes (updated for today's cooks), all inspired by the life and example of Edda Servi Machlin, author of The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews.
The delectable taste of this novel will linger with readers, even when the book is closed.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published April 14, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 15, 2026
I loved this book. Told through a child's eyes, Leah Eskin's war story floats along gently, even in its most dark and bitter moments. An adult narrator gives us a different perspective, along with a slew of tempting recipes (I've made the lamb and the double artichoke pasta, both delicious). It's a writerly balancing act that is informative, entertaining, and good for dinner, too. Highly recommended!
May 21, 2026
Cuisine is far more than food—it is the thread that binds cultures, histories, and generations together. This novel captures that beautifully through two intertwined storylines spanning from the 1940s to the 2000s, following two families whose lives are deeply connected through the traditions of Jewish Italian cuisine. It also shines a light on a culture that was nearly erased under Mussolini’s anti-Jewish laws, making the story feel both meaningful and deeply personal.
One of my favorite aspects of the book was how the cuisine itself became as vivid and important as the characters of Stella and Edda. The meals, recipes, and traditions added such richness to the story that they almost felt alive on the page. I became deeply invested in both women and their journeys, and because this perspective of World War II history is not one we often hear about, I found myself wanting even more historical detail woven throughout the novel.
I also appreciated the inclusion of the recipes, though I think the audiobook format may have benefited from shortening or simplifying some of them. With two timelines already unfolding, the detailed recipes occasionally disrupted the pacing and made parts of the story slightly harder to follow.
Even so, this was a beautifully written and immersive historical novel that I would absolutely recommend to others—especially readers who enjoy stories centered around family, culture, resilience, and food. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read and review this title.
One of my favorite aspects of the book was how the cuisine itself became as vivid and important as the characters of Stella and Edda. The meals, recipes, and traditions added such richness to the story that they almost felt alive on the page. I became deeply invested in both women and their journeys, and because this perspective of World War II history is not one we often hear about, I found myself wanting even more historical detail woven throughout the novel.
I also appreciated the inclusion of the recipes, though I think the audiobook format may have benefited from shortening or simplifying some of them. With two timelines already unfolding, the detailed recipes occasionally disrupted the pacing and made parts of the story slightly harder to follow.
Even so, this was a beautifully written and immersive historical novel that I would absolutely recommend to others—especially readers who enjoy stories centered around family, culture, resilience, and food. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read and review this title.
May 19, 2026
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25/5
Like Wafers in Honey is an immersive, sweeping historical fiction debut.
I had a wonderful time with this one. I adored the incorporation of recipes; they beautifully added to the narrative and welcoming, tasty atmosphere of the story. The plot was engaging, emotional, and powerful, but the pacing felt a bit rushed. The settings were atmospheric, filled with vivid historical details. The cast was entertaining and well-developed. Leah Eskin’s prose was beautiful, entertaining, witty, and heartfelt. I absolutely recommend this one!
Carlotta Brentan was a wonderful narrator. Her voice captured the characters, emotion, and atmosphere beautifully. I highly recommend the audiobook, although I do suggest having the physical copy with you as well to see the recipes!
Thank you to the publisher for the free ALC and finished copy!
Like Wafers in Honey is an immersive, sweeping historical fiction debut.
I had a wonderful time with this one. I adored the incorporation of recipes; they beautifully added to the narrative and welcoming, tasty atmosphere of the story. The plot was engaging, emotional, and powerful, but the pacing felt a bit rushed. The settings were atmospheric, filled with vivid historical details. The cast was entertaining and well-developed. Leah Eskin’s prose was beautiful, entertaining, witty, and heartfelt. I absolutely recommend this one!
Carlotta Brentan was a wonderful narrator. Her voice captured the characters, emotion, and atmosphere beautifully. I highly recommend the audiobook, although I do suggest having the physical copy with you as well to see the recipes!
Thank you to the publisher for the free ALC and finished copy!
May 30, 2026
⭐⭐⭐½ print / ⭐⭐½ audiobook
Before anything else. The format. Because I almost wrote a furious review and then looked at the print version and had to start over.
If you listened to the audiobook: your frustration is valid. That’s a different object. I’ll get to it. The stars above are for print readers. Keep reading.
Okay so. This book.
Leah Eskin is a food writer who decided to novelize the life of Edda Servi Machlin. Real person. Italian Jewish cookbook author. Who as a teenager hid in the Tuscan countryside for seven months while her parents and little brother sat in a concentration camp twenty kilometers away. The fictionalized Edda is called Stella. Short chapters alternate between her 1943-44 survival and tiny flash-forwards of Edda building her life in America decades later. And between almost every chapter: a full recipe. Measuring cups and everything.
In print? The Edda sections are in gray boxes. The recipes get their own visual space. There are little illustrations at every chapter opening. The whole mosaic structure clicks into place and you go oh, I see what this is, memory held in measurements, history preserved in a ricotta pudding. It works. It really works.
In audio? The narrator reads you flour measurements right after Stella watches her family’s bus drive past and cannot stop it. “One and a half cups all-purpose flour.” I genuinely wanted to throw my phone. Every single recipe dropped me out of the story and the tension just never came back the same way after. The format strips out every visual cue that makes the structure make sense. 2.5 stars for that experience and I stand by it.
The narrator. I like her, I genuinely do, she’s wonderful for YA fantasy and gentle content and the Edda-in-America chapters she absolutely nailed, this slightly impatient wry energy, a woman who is very aware of how funny she is. But Stella hiding in wet woods listening for German boots on the road? Those scenes needed to sound like borrowed mattresses and cold feet and bile. She kept making them sound like a fairy tale. Which. Well. About that.
Is this middle grade?
No, seriously. Is it?
The chapters are two pages. Sometimes one. The prose has this fable rhythm, very short, very declarative, Stella constantly casting herself as Berenice or Juliet or Persephone like she’s narrating her own legend. The chapter illustrations are genuinely lovely and also unmistakably the kind you find in a middle grade novel. A friend saw me reading it and asked if it was for kids. And I paused. I actually paused.
And then Stella’s farmhand bunkmate gropes her under the quilt at night. And there’s a scene where pork goes down “deliciously” and the book makes this tiny quiet joke of it, seventeen-year-old Jewish girl eating forbidden meat in a Fascist farmhouse, tasting nothing but the luscious grease and just... moving on. Like okay. That happened. That moment is sharp and adult and one of my favorite things in the whole book. So it is not accidentally middle grade. The book knows what it’s doing. It just looks like something else sometimes, and the audiobook narrator leaned into the fable quality so hard it tipped the whole thing over.
(I think the print version holds the tonal balance better. The gray boxes and the visual structure ground it. In audio it just floated off into fairy tale territory and stayed there.)
What the writing actually does, when it does it: “The air tasted of salt and sunshine.” Stella threading her embroidery knowledge onto the Tuscan landscape while she’s cold and scared and starving. And this line stopped me completely: the family name Servi traces back to the Judeans enslaved in Rome in 71 CE. Which means Stella’s people have been in Italy longer than Christians have been Christian. Two sentences. No fanfare. Just there. That is so good. That is the kind of thing I read historical fiction for and almost never get.
The Italian Jewish specificity in general. Not the Ashkenazi template, not the Eastern European narrative that publishing keeps reaching for. Pitigliano’s “Little Jerusalem.” Two thousand years of Jewish presence in one Tuscan hill town. The sfratti cookies named for the eviction stick used to drive Jews out, baked in a Jewish bakery, sweet reminder of bitter times. Papà as rabbi, cantor, letter-writer for peasant women who trusted him because their grandmothers had trusted his grandmother. That’s a specific world. The book knows it and I loved it for that.
But then Edda in America. Every time she showed up I wanted to stay and the book just left. Her entire life from 1958 to 2000 compressed into half-page vignettes. The Andrew Goodman murder happened inside her social circle and the book mentions it and moves on. Moves. On. Are you kidding me. We spend more time with the farmhouse guys (Muscles, Belly, Lazy-Eye, yes those are the names) than we ever spend with Edda’s daughters. I don’t understand that choice. I genuinely don’t.
And Arthur. Oh, Arthur. (South African soldier. Christmas Eve. Fox-trot. You know the type.)
The book wants this to be the famous kind of love. Stella wants this to be the famous kind of love. He can’t explain the dubious cabbages, doesn’t read books, vanishes to go ride a horse with someone else for no explained reason. Stella notices all of this and the book sort of... shrugs. Which is honest, people fall for wrong people in extremity, especially at seventeen, especially when someone shows up warm and dancing and the alternative is another night of cold borrowed hay. Fine. But Arthur contributes atmosphere more than he contributes anything real, and every scene with him reads like the book fulfilling a romance requirement rather than actually feeling something.
Okay. Spoilers spoilers from here. The ending.
[SPOILER]
The family reunites. Papà talked his way into a Fascist official’s vacated hotel by promising to put in a good word after the war, and the man just handed over the keys and fled. Which is the most believable and funniest thing in the whole book and I loved it. Then German officers move in and Stella cooks for them for a week. There’s an officer who muses that wars should be fought in stadiums, leaders killing each other in the center, everyone else watching and clapping. Mario flings himself across the coffee table to cover the prayer book. Lello escapes through the kitchen window leaving a bootprint in the sink. Tense, dark, slightly absurdist. And somehow. It works.
And then Papà reads from his camp diary. The names on the buses. Twenty-one to Fossoli. Twenty-five to Fossoli. Auschwitz after that. More than a thousand people deported from Rome on a single day in October 1943. Sixteen came back. Sixteen. The book names Edda’s grandmother, her aunts, her cousins in that list.
And the final chapter is challah. The family braiding challah together, one strand for each person living and dead. The loaf is one.
It got me. I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.
But. The philosophizing German officer gets more interiority than any of those names in the diary. The book lingers with him, lets him be funny, lets him be almost right about something. And the people who were actually murdered are a list that takes a page, and then we move to honey cake. I keep turning that over. Maybe that’s exactly the point, refusing to make atrocity into spectacle, naming the dead quietly without giving their murders dramatic weight because they were people not a plot moment and the book knows it. Maybe giving the German officer interiority is the more unsettling choice, the one that’s harder to dismiss. Maybe. I do like when antagonist characters have shades and there are shown more sides to a uniform. But in this context it just felt … off. But still. Maybe the book handed warmth to a man complicit in all of that and didn’t notice what it was doing?
I honestly cannot tell you which one it is. I’ve thought about it a lot.
[END SPOILER]
Last thing. The cookbook actually works. The recipes are real, detailed, adapted for modern kitchens. There’s a ricotta pudding and a challah and a fried Chanukah chicken and I would cook from this. I would genuinely cook from this. I don’t know another WWII novel I can say that about. The print version makes that visible as an actual dual object, novel and cookbook at once, and nobody is doing that. Nobody. (Or is there?)
3.5 stars. Print only. The audiobook is its own cautionary tale.
I received this ARC via NetGalley and the audiobook from the publisher. This changed exactly nothing about any of the above.
Before anything else. The format. Because I almost wrote a furious review and then looked at the print version and had to start over.
If you listened to the audiobook: your frustration is valid. That’s a different object. I’ll get to it. The stars above are for print readers. Keep reading.
Okay so. This book.
Leah Eskin is a food writer who decided to novelize the life of Edda Servi Machlin. Real person. Italian Jewish cookbook author. Who as a teenager hid in the Tuscan countryside for seven months while her parents and little brother sat in a concentration camp twenty kilometers away. The fictionalized Edda is called Stella. Short chapters alternate between her 1943-44 survival and tiny flash-forwards of Edda building her life in America decades later. And between almost every chapter: a full recipe. Measuring cups and everything.
In print? The Edda sections are in gray boxes. The recipes get their own visual space. There are little illustrations at every chapter opening. The whole mosaic structure clicks into place and you go oh, I see what this is, memory held in measurements, history preserved in a ricotta pudding. It works. It really works.
In audio? The narrator reads you flour measurements right after Stella watches her family’s bus drive past and cannot stop it. “One and a half cups all-purpose flour.” I genuinely wanted to throw my phone. Every single recipe dropped me out of the story and the tension just never came back the same way after. The format strips out every visual cue that makes the structure make sense. 2.5 stars for that experience and I stand by it.
The narrator. I like her, I genuinely do, she’s wonderful for YA fantasy and gentle content and the Edda-in-America chapters she absolutely nailed, this slightly impatient wry energy, a woman who is very aware of how funny she is. But Stella hiding in wet woods listening for German boots on the road? Those scenes needed to sound like borrowed mattresses and cold feet and bile. She kept making them sound like a fairy tale. Which. Well. About that.
Is this middle grade?
No, seriously. Is it?
The chapters are two pages. Sometimes one. The prose has this fable rhythm, very short, very declarative, Stella constantly casting herself as Berenice or Juliet or Persephone like she’s narrating her own legend. The chapter illustrations are genuinely lovely and also unmistakably the kind you find in a middle grade novel. A friend saw me reading it and asked if it was for kids. And I paused. I actually paused.
And then Stella’s farmhand bunkmate gropes her under the quilt at night. And there’s a scene where pork goes down “deliciously” and the book makes this tiny quiet joke of it, seventeen-year-old Jewish girl eating forbidden meat in a Fascist farmhouse, tasting nothing but the luscious grease and just... moving on. Like okay. That happened. That moment is sharp and adult and one of my favorite things in the whole book. So it is not accidentally middle grade. The book knows what it’s doing. It just looks like something else sometimes, and the audiobook narrator leaned into the fable quality so hard it tipped the whole thing over.
(I think the print version holds the tonal balance better. The gray boxes and the visual structure ground it. In audio it just floated off into fairy tale territory and stayed there.)
What the writing actually does, when it does it: “The air tasted of salt and sunshine.” Stella threading her embroidery knowledge onto the Tuscan landscape while she’s cold and scared and starving. And this line stopped me completely: the family name Servi traces back to the Judeans enslaved in Rome in 71 CE. Which means Stella’s people have been in Italy longer than Christians have been Christian. Two sentences. No fanfare. Just there. That is so good. That is the kind of thing I read historical fiction for and almost never get.
The Italian Jewish specificity in general. Not the Ashkenazi template, not the Eastern European narrative that publishing keeps reaching for. Pitigliano’s “Little Jerusalem.” Two thousand years of Jewish presence in one Tuscan hill town. The sfratti cookies named for the eviction stick used to drive Jews out, baked in a Jewish bakery, sweet reminder of bitter times. Papà as rabbi, cantor, letter-writer for peasant women who trusted him because their grandmothers had trusted his grandmother. That’s a specific world. The book knows it and I loved it for that.
But then Edda in America. Every time she showed up I wanted to stay and the book just left. Her entire life from 1958 to 2000 compressed into half-page vignettes. The Andrew Goodman murder happened inside her social circle and the book mentions it and moves on. Moves. On. Are you kidding me. We spend more time with the farmhouse guys (Muscles, Belly, Lazy-Eye, yes those are the names) than we ever spend with Edda’s daughters. I don’t understand that choice. I genuinely don’t.
And Arthur. Oh, Arthur. (South African soldier. Christmas Eve. Fox-trot. You know the type.)
The book wants this to be the famous kind of love. Stella wants this to be the famous kind of love. He can’t explain the dubious cabbages, doesn’t read books, vanishes to go ride a horse with someone else for no explained reason. Stella notices all of this and the book sort of... shrugs. Which is honest, people fall for wrong people in extremity, especially at seventeen, especially when someone shows up warm and dancing and the alternative is another night of cold borrowed hay. Fine. But Arthur contributes atmosphere more than he contributes anything real, and every scene with him reads like the book fulfilling a romance requirement rather than actually feeling something.
Okay. Spoilers spoilers from here. The ending.
[SPOILER]
The family reunites. Papà talked his way into a Fascist official’s vacated hotel by promising to put in a good word after the war, and the man just handed over the keys and fled. Which is the most believable and funniest thing in the whole book and I loved it. Then German officers move in and Stella cooks for them for a week. There’s an officer who muses that wars should be fought in stadiums, leaders killing each other in the center, everyone else watching and clapping. Mario flings himself across the coffee table to cover the prayer book. Lello escapes through the kitchen window leaving a bootprint in the sink. Tense, dark, slightly absurdist. And somehow. It works.
And then Papà reads from his camp diary. The names on the buses. Twenty-one to Fossoli. Twenty-five to Fossoli. Auschwitz after that. More than a thousand people deported from Rome on a single day in October 1943. Sixteen came back. Sixteen. The book names Edda’s grandmother, her aunts, her cousins in that list.
And the final chapter is challah. The family braiding challah together, one strand for each person living and dead. The loaf is one.
It got me. I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.
But. The philosophizing German officer gets more interiority than any of those names in the diary. The book lingers with him, lets him be funny, lets him be almost right about something. And the people who were actually murdered are a list that takes a page, and then we move to honey cake. I keep turning that over. Maybe that’s exactly the point, refusing to make atrocity into spectacle, naming the dead quietly without giving their murders dramatic weight because they were people not a plot moment and the book knows it. Maybe giving the German officer interiority is the more unsettling choice, the one that’s harder to dismiss. Maybe. I do like when antagonist characters have shades and there are shown more sides to a uniform. But in this context it just felt … off. But still. Maybe the book handed warmth to a man complicit in all of that and didn’t notice what it was doing?
I honestly cannot tell you which one it is. I’ve thought about it a lot.
[END SPOILER]
Last thing. The cookbook actually works. The recipes are real, detailed, adapted for modern kitchens. There’s a ricotta pudding and a challah and a fried Chanukah chicken and I would cook from this. I would genuinely cook from this. I don’t know another WWII novel I can say that about. The print version makes that visible as an actual dual object, novel and cookbook at once, and nobody is doing that. Nobody. (Or is there?)
3.5 stars. Print only. The audiobook is its own cautionary tale.
I received this ARC via NetGalley and the audiobook from the publisher. This changed exactly nothing about any of the above.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Valuable read... delicious, if slow.
Every dish has a history. My favorite part about this tale wasn't the story, or the recipes, alone. It was that they came together; food has a story, steeped in history, culture, passed through generations of hands. This book won't only give you the facts. It will show you a glimpse of the soul of the food.
Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.
tags: historical fiction, family, cooking
"The times could also loop back, link hands with the past, and in a crystalline moment of joy, stand still."
The story follows two timelines, one mid-war and one in the sixties. In 1943, a girl must flee with her siblings through the Italian countryside, where she hides and grows and dreams of the taste of home. Years later, we hear the voice of Edda, a housewife and immigrant to America. I loved that it was based on a true story — besides the very real events in Italy during WII, the book was inspired by Edda Servi Machlin, author of The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews.
I wasn't sold at first. Make a recipe book, or write a short tale, I thought. Why both? But I was curious of the concept, and felt immediately charmed by the small illustrations that start each chapter. And when I finished and sat down to think (once I stopped panicking after accidentally publishing my jumbled notes as a first-time review) I realized why intertwining the recipes into the story worked so well. Like Edda explains at the beginning:
"'Recepie?' said Edda. Cooking came from memory, from instinct, from experience. It wasn't a formula copied off Gene's blackboard, a 'how to' snipped from the Jell-O box."
Every dish has a history. My favorite part about this tale wasn't the story, or the recipes, alone. It was that they came together; food has a story, steeped in history, culture, passed through generations of hands. This book won't only give you the facts. It will show you a glimpse of the soul of the food.
But why, then, did you only give it four stars?
It was slow, and at times confusing. While it had beautiful, flavored, vibrant individual descriptions, it was hard to capture the whole plot and timeline. I didn't feel the spark in the characters that sometimes lights them alive and real. But the book? The story? That had spirit. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a satisfying tale on the strength of family, of home, and of course, food.
Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.
tags: historical fiction, family, cooking
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Full disclosure: I read Like Wafers in Honey twice. The first reading was to discover what happened to Stella during World War II, as well as Edda's experiences as an immigrant in post-war America. But this is no ordinary Holocaust novel. It is a celebration of family, faith, and most of all, food. It demanded a second reading to luxuriate in the language, each word chosen with care. I didn't want to miss a thing, including the humor and whimsy that is sprinkled throughout both Stella's and Edda's stories. (Stella considers saying kaddish for her boots when they fall apart for the last time.) Edda's story of adjusting to American suburbia, from Tupperware to the NYC artists' scene, was remarkable, particularly because it's true. Edda's circle of friends included Harry Belafonte, Zero Mostel, Jackie Robinson, and Carolyn & Bobby Goodman, whose son, Andrew, was murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.
I loved everything about this book, including the beautiful illustrations at the beginning of each of Stella's chapters. ( I copied some recipes to make for my family, choosing Bread Soup for my first one.) The book is also filled with obscure facts and trivia...I wrote those down too, so I can tell my granddaughter later. Like Wafers in Honey felt like a validation of the importance my family has always placed on cooking as comfort. Leah Eskin has written a story in which food is presented not only as sustenance, but as memory, uniquely able to remind us of who we are. It's our cultural blueprint, passed through generations and tweaked along the way. Kudos to the author for this impressive debut novel, and I look forward to more. Like Wafers in Honey was an unexpected treat, and I highly recommend it.
My thanks to NetGalley and Levine Querido for the ARC. The review and all opinions are entirely my own.
I loved everything about this book, including the beautiful illustrations at the beginning of each of Stella's chapters. ( I copied some recipes to make for my family, choosing Bread Soup for my first one.) The book is also filled with obscure facts and trivia...I wrote those down too, so I can tell my granddaughter later. Like Wafers in Honey felt like a validation of the importance my family has always placed on cooking as comfort. Leah Eskin has written a story in which food is presented not only as sustenance, but as memory, uniquely able to remind us of who we are. It's our cultural blueprint, passed through generations and tweaked along the way. Kudos to the author for this impressive debut novel, and I look forward to more. Like Wafers in Honey was an unexpected treat, and I highly recommend it.
My thanks to NetGalley and Levine Querido for the ARC. The review and all opinions are entirely my own.
May 8, 2026
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this novel. I often don't like historical novels as the authors tend to use literary devices to teach about an event. The books are often didactic, clunky, and boring. Eskin’s first novel is not. The novel is based on the life of Edda Servi Machlin and her experiences hiding during the Nazi occupation of Italy as well as her life as a Jewish Italian immigrant to the US learning of her power as a cook to affect others. Using her skills as a journalist Eskin probed deeply into Machlin’s world of a war torn rural Italy as well as mid-century post war America. As a writer Eskin uses these details to tell the story with concise and creative prose. I found her metaphors unique helping me feel what it was like for Machlin to become a resilient, creative woman. I also liked the structure of the story, each chapter told in three parts: the teenager on the run in Nazi occupied Italy, the Italian Jewish immigrant in the US discovering herself as a cook and author, and a recipe based on the recipes from Machlin’s cookbooks. This unique structure drove the two stories, one from Machlin’s youth and one from her adulthood, forward together, one informing the other.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This is an interesting read and I loved the relationship with food and the recipes. The overall story of Stella Fortuna I followed along and found rather interesting but the interspersing story of Edda Servi Machlin put me on the back foot and I found it made the overall feel of the book a bit confusing.
So overall a different way to write a book and a good story(s) but I would have preferred just one story and the recipes as the way it was written just made it a bit disjointed for me.
Like Wafers in Honey: A Novel
Leah Eskin
So overall a different way to write a book and a good story(s) but I would have preferred just one story and the recipes as the way it was written just made it a bit disjointed for me.
Like Wafers in Honey: A Novel
Leah Eskin
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This book would be perfect for cookbook lovers and history fans alike. This story follows the life of food author Edda Servi Machlin in two different timelines-growing up in Italy during WWII and her adult life after marrying and moving to the United States. I struggled somewhat at the beginning of the book, because the storylines didn't seem to line up at all. What kept me going were the traditional recipes and the adorable little illustrations between chapters. They were so charming, and I just loved them. I'm glad I stuck with it, because Edda's story became quite emotional and I enjoyed it in the end. I tend to be drawn to Historical titles, and this one does a great job of focusing on a somewhat lesser-known aspect of WWII and the Holocaust-the struggles and hardships faced by the Jewish population in Italy, and those who cared for them.
**Thanks to Levine Querido and Netgalley for the ARC of this book!
**Thanks to Levine Querido and Netgalley for the ARC of this book!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Jews never had it easy. Italy, for a long time, was a safe—or at least fairly safe—place for them to be. Until it wasn’t. The changes came late compared to other countries in Europe during World War II, but that doesn’t mean they were any less painful. Not at all.
This is a story about a family trying to escape evil, trying to survive. And they do, thankfully. But still, life is never easy for them.
Each story has its own recipe and a little illustration. All very cute, although some of the recipes could use a bit more detail—they aren’t always very clear to follow. Still, it’s a charming little book that brings a bit of light, which we all need right now.
This is a story about a family trying to escape evil, trying to survive. And they do, thankfully. But still, life is never easy for them.
Each story has its own recipe and a little illustration. All very cute, although some of the recipes could use a bit more detail—they aren’t always very clear to follow. Still, it’s a charming little book that brings a bit of light, which we all need right now.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I received an advanced copy in exchange for my honest thoughts:
I was unable to focus on this story. Just in the first chapter, the main character brings in too many variables to keep track of, which became overwhelming when trying to determine what was important to pay attention to and what wasn't. I also felt that the main character was disjointedly written, both overly juvenile and overly adult-like for her age.
I was unable to focus on this story. Just in the first chapter, the main character brings in too many variables to keep track of, which became overwhelming when trying to determine what was important to pay attention to and what wasn't. I also felt that the main character was disjointedly written, both overly juvenile and overly adult-like for her age.
May 22, 2026
Combining a novel with a cookbook is a really creative idea, but I don't think it works as an audiobook. The novel balances 2 different timelines that don't really connect until the VERY end, and many recipes that sound delicious but probably make more sense to read than listen to. I also don't feel like we really get to *know* any of the characters - the writing almost feels aloof, if that makes sense? Overall, it felt a bit chaotic with underdeveloped characters.
May 28, 2026
I am a big fan of historical fiction and this novel checked all the boxes…and then some. I devoured the interwoven experiences of an Italian Jewish teen during WWII and a spicy immigrant woman in America, along with traditional recipes that I cannot wait to try. (I am now ready to fry my first artichoke!) It is hard to believe that this is Leah Eskin’s first novel with its complex flavors, wit and wisdom.
April 23, 2026
Eskin’s well-researched, tender historical novel is a pleasure to read. The true story of Edda Servi Machlin itself is compelling. But Eskin’s taut, sensitive prose added immeasurably to the story. And, of course, the themes of familial love, survival during horrific times, and the power of cooking to maintain connectedness made for an engaging, emotional read. Highest recommendations!
May 20, 2026
Great sort of all-ages book. Enough adventure for younger readers, and those of us who ... aren't younger... can enjoy a stirring story wrapped in clever and sophisticated prose. More use of metonymy than you may be used to, to keep you alert. It's a clever choice though, as it allows us to look obliquely at the pain in the story. Life goes on, the story suggests, even when it's hard.
May 29, 2026
Probably would have preferred this in print! The recipes and the flashes forward broke up the flow a little, and the recipes would definitely be better in print in case I ever wanted to make any! I skipped past most of them. Nice narration, if a little slow (had to bring it to 1.5 speed), but the story felt a bit too disjointed to follow who was who and what exactly was going on.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A work of historical fiction which focuses on a Jewish family’s attempts to escape the Italian fascists of WW2. This plot line alternates with one in which an Italian immigrant adjusts to life in America of the 60’s. There are many twists to both storylines, causing them to eventually intersect in a breath-taking ending.
* I received a digital copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are strictly my own.*
* I received a digital copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are strictly my own.*
Did Not Finish
June 1, 2026Got this as an ARC from a librarian friend. Needed a book with recipes so was excited for it. But I couldn't get into it - jumped around too much for me to follow along. Might come back to it or possibly try some of the recipes but as of now, its a proud DNF.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I couldn't put this down! I was immediately drawn into Eskin's fictionalization of the life of Edda Servi Machlin, who introduced Italian Jewish cuisine to Americans in the 1960s. I also appreciated the inclusion of recipes—some of which I hope to try!—although I wasn't immediately sold on how they were placed between each chapter. I think I was so immersed in the story of Stella surviving the Holocaust in Italy that I didn't want to jump to the more modern storyline or be pulled out of that narrative with the recipes. Still, it was beautifully and powerfully written—I hope this book will be read by many. 4.5 stars.
Thank you to Levine Querido and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to Levine Querido and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I love history and I love cooking. This book delivers a bit of both and really filled my heart as I read through it. Heartaches and perseverance made this one really meaningful for me.
April 15, 2026
This is a beautiful book filled with faith, family, and food during a time of war. I loved the recipes throughout and can't wait to try some of them.
April 23, 2026
"Richly imagined, in delicious prose....." https://www.thenationalbookreview.com...
May 19, 2026
A great book, filled with history, recipes, and beautiful writing. Worth a read!
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