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Meringue
June Mooney is in utter despair when she learns of her husband’s disappearance. With no one to turn to and a third child on the way, her future appears hopeless until she discovers an enchanted recipe for meringue tucked away in the attic.
Thanks to a batch of divine meringue pâtisseries, a new chapter in June’s life begins with the opening of a French-inspired café. As she bakes away her sorrows, the humble restaurant flourishes. However, when June revamps the menu, setting aside the charmed concoction, disaster follows. The magic in the little café dwindles while conflict arises in the family. Soon, June is struck by another misfortune when Harold D’Alembert, an acclaimed French chef, opens an exquisite restaurant right next door…
Like the pleasures of an epicurean experience, Meringue is a delicious and endearing tale about a cookbook inhabited by a spirit and the mesmerizing effects it has on a quiet little town.
Thanks to a batch of divine meringue pâtisseries, a new chapter in June’s life begins with the opening of a French-inspired café. As she bakes away her sorrows, the humble restaurant flourishes. However, when June revamps the menu, setting aside the charmed concoction, disaster follows. The magic in the little café dwindles while conflict arises in the family. Soon, June is struck by another misfortune when Harold D’Alembert, an acclaimed French chef, opens an exquisite restaurant right next door…
Like the pleasures of an epicurean experience, Meringue is a delicious and endearing tale about a cookbook inhabited by a spirit and the mesmerizing effects it has on a quiet little town.
376 pages, Paperback
First published August 5, 2015
17 people are currently reading
674 people want to read
About the author
Christine Lemieux
3 books33 followersChristine Lemieux grew up in the Eastern Townships and now lives near the Canadian Rockies. She is passionate about children's literacy, the mountains, animals, good food & family life. To find out more, please visit her website: www.christine-lemieux.com
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 24, 2015
First, a thank you to Goodreads and Christine for a chance to read this delicious book and for sending it my way, having won it in Goodreads giveaway !
I RARELY give a 5 star rating (not my first Goodread free copy though my first 5 star rating of one) and this wonderful novel was deserving of the highest !
You know that thrill you get when you open a new book and realize within the first few pages that you are going to enjoy it ? This was one, and a rare and wonderful book with many captivating characters and their love stories!
Christine Lemieux, you're fantastic and I can't WAIT for a sequel !!!!!
OUTSTANDING !
I RARELY give a 5 star rating (not my first Goodread free copy though my first 5 star rating of one) and this wonderful novel was deserving of the highest !
You know that thrill you get when you open a new book and realize within the first few pages that you are going to enjoy it ? This was one, and a rare and wonderful book with many captivating characters and their love stories!
Christine Lemieux, you're fantastic and I can't WAIT for a sequel !!!!!
OUTSTANDING !
September 28, 2015
this book is brilliant, wonderfully written and inspiring. It is a comfort to read and emotions that emerse from the text come straight to the heart. Feels like you are there. I hope there is a sequal to this book as I Am fascinated by the writting and curious about these characters. Felt like home when I read it, I couldn't read fast enough as for each chapter I was eager for the next. wonderful purchase, you won't regret it
December 31, 2015
I am grateful for winning this book from Goodreads.
I just loved this book. The atmosphere of the quaint town with its wonderful cafes and restaurants adds to the the special feeling one gets from this good story. I can enthusiastically recommend this book to those who enjoy well developed characters set in a very special setting.
I just loved this book. The atmosphere of the quaint town with its wonderful cafes and restaurants adds to the the special feeling one gets from this good story. I can enthusiastically recommend this book to those who enjoy well developed characters set in a very special setting.
December 4, 2015
I won this book from a goodreads giveaway. Oh my, this book was so charming and well-written. It have an underlying theme of family, food, living life to the fullest. Really well done Christine!
5/5
5/5
April 13, 2017
The author’s aim is sparklingly clear as she’s improvising upon a fool-proof literary recipe where it’s supposed to be inconceivable for a reviewer to say anything apart from “a delightfully charming romantic tale in a gastronomic setting whose plot threads tie together as neat as a string of garlic in the kitchen of your dreams”. After all, there’s a mouth-watering reference to cuisine or ingredients on almost every page, picture postcard scenery, cultural mystique, a best friend with indulgence problems, three daughters bobbing about on a loose end of twine like romantic magnets in sensible shoes, unsuccessful shots at independence from which the magic valley always draws them back, an elder generation highly skilled with the lobster bisque, a sense of danger from a competitor setting up shop next door and a drifting family business that needs to wake up, urgently.
This pattern works, as we already know from Ang Lee’s mighty Eat, Drink, Man, Woman with its life changing announcements and Joanne Harris’s Chocolat with its sprinkle of tempting delights, both of which were projects that exuded charm from every dripping piping nozzle. According to the Chinese Book of Rites, the primary desires are to eat, drink and have each other on the kitchen worktop (paraphrased), although desire strangely carries more tension in a pastel clean romance like this. Although Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence tells an entirely different story, so they can’t be compared in that way, both that and Meringue build layers of aromas, spices, bountiful colours, textures and juices on the tongue to marinate the reader into the world they’ve constructed. The author isn’t connecting you through thought, they’re toying with your senses, curling a finger into your hair, caressing your neck and whispering “I cooked something for you. Will you stay?” Time passes differently in these idyllic faerie dells and, like Brigadoon, no one ever leaves for long.
Meringue is a book intended to pull the same “recipe for food and love” trick as the works above, so without comparing and contrasting it with the other two, does that happen? Now let’s set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit to see whether it is humanly possible to read Meringue by Christine Lemieux and not make a meringue at the end.
“But it is vital to not be mistaken; sweets are nothing other than a marriage of simple ingredients enhanced by the use of sugar.”
The first thing to consider is the premise. The reason why the family got into meringues in the first place is because they had a lot of sugar and the reason they had a lot of sugar is not only elegant and credible but I can imagine it might have actually happened, so that’s a top piece of writing right there. A family line emerges and time changes all, including countries, then we’re into the pine-scented air and bitter cherries of a new Eden, French Canada.
Then, and the egg cracked, an event has befallen the owner which has caused them to stop making meringues overnight, as a metaphor to reflect something that has gone very wrong in life, a disturbance in the fuzzy aura of candyfloss happiness that these characters naturally deserve, even the men, but there’s always a wasp. The key to the whole plot, meringue, affects all. If, as usual, the kitchen is a metaphor for the spiritual heart and comfort of a family, the absence of meringue in a restaurant called Meringue is a devastating scream in the wilderness. Crikey, another good piece of writing that’s not over-concocted.
A heavy swathe of this book is about suppressed personal feelings between the women of the family and their knights errant, can I, can’t I, how is it possible I feel this way, make a date, break a date, fall into those eyes, I’m lost, no, I’ve changed my mind, rejected, the shame, a life alone, despair, I’ve made the worst mistake of my life, come back!, I’m overcome, I’m yours, whisk me. Succulence does need time to develop, so these threads take a lot of pages to work through as characters who can’t express their feelings associate their love with edible pleasures. How to make a Canadian quilt? Is it just me or are these characters all different kinds of attractive puddings, wholesome ingredients of the story that could go together in different combinations?
With apologies to the author, I have to find some small aspect to challenge the perfection of all this or the other critics would circle around me, turn their backs and snip off my buttons [how do you do that by the way? Without looking?]: In Meringue, the technique and artistry of gourmet food preparation is not elaborated upon, which suggests it is more of a lifestyle romance than a cook book, which is fair enough or I would have bought a cook book, but I think that’s a shame because I wanted to interact with this book, to hear a reproducible and authentic sauce constructed one fresh herb at a time, including how an experienced professional saves it, with élan, when something messes up. When a life messes up, can they salvage and transform it in the same way, perhaps discovering something better? Can calories be teased into philosophy? There’s a lot of talk about food and the craft is shown to have happened as trays come out of the oven but the final product is there with its fancy name but without the method, so the author has embraced and communicated their passion for food (associated with love and home) but perhaps is less passionate about the process of converting raw ingredients into a dish. Yes, it’s an art-form but show us some sculpting and not just the sculpture, as Ang Lee’s master chef Chu does when he inflates the chicken with his breath and Juliette Binoche does when she shows her understudy how to make Nipples of Venus. This doesn’t spoil the book; it’s just me being pedantic.
Anyway, there was one exception: “The eggs should be separated cold but need to be at room temperature when you whisk them.” Knowledge is a wonderful thing, unless reading this book costs me a tooth. I’ve already looked up the chef that all of this stems from, Francois Massialot (1660-1733), and started foodie side-tracking. He was the first to publish the crème brûlée recipe as well, so there’s the sequel already potted into a ramekin for you.
I was going to give this feel-good story four and a bit stars but then it had a great ending, so up it went.
“At that moment the first firecracker whizzed up into the dark sky, exploded and sprouted into a multitude of luminous trails, falling down like dazzling raindrops toward the ground.”
This isn’t about a chef inhabiting a zone of artistry and weaving magic with their spatula. This is about a woman who has struggled all her life for her children, to give them a loving heart for a home and make them complete, at last. Meringue is where the familial circle starts and where it all ends and, of course, it has to have a gooey middle.
Is it humanly possible to read Meringue by Christine Lemieux and not make a meringue at the end? Apparently it isn’t because the oven’s on. I’m so impressionable.
This pattern works, as we already know from Ang Lee’s mighty Eat, Drink, Man, Woman with its life changing announcements and Joanne Harris’s Chocolat with its sprinkle of tempting delights, both of which were projects that exuded charm from every dripping piping nozzle. According to the Chinese Book of Rites, the primary desires are to eat, drink and have each other on the kitchen worktop (paraphrased), although desire strangely carries more tension in a pastel clean romance like this. Although Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence tells an entirely different story, so they can’t be compared in that way, both that and Meringue build layers of aromas, spices, bountiful colours, textures and juices on the tongue to marinate the reader into the world they’ve constructed. The author isn’t connecting you through thought, they’re toying with your senses, curling a finger into your hair, caressing your neck and whispering “I cooked something for you. Will you stay?” Time passes differently in these idyllic faerie dells and, like Brigadoon, no one ever leaves for long.
Meringue is a book intended to pull the same “recipe for food and love” trick as the works above, so without comparing and contrasting it with the other two, does that happen? Now let’s set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit to see whether it is humanly possible to read Meringue by Christine Lemieux and not make a meringue at the end.
“But it is vital to not be mistaken; sweets are nothing other than a marriage of simple ingredients enhanced by the use of sugar.”
The first thing to consider is the premise. The reason why the family got into meringues in the first place is because they had a lot of sugar and the reason they had a lot of sugar is not only elegant and credible but I can imagine it might have actually happened, so that’s a top piece of writing right there. A family line emerges and time changes all, including countries, then we’re into the pine-scented air and bitter cherries of a new Eden, French Canada.
Then, and the egg cracked, an event has befallen the owner which has caused them to stop making meringues overnight, as a metaphor to reflect something that has gone very wrong in life, a disturbance in the fuzzy aura of candyfloss happiness that these characters naturally deserve, even the men, but there’s always a wasp. The key to the whole plot, meringue, affects all. If, as usual, the kitchen is a metaphor for the spiritual heart and comfort of a family, the absence of meringue in a restaurant called Meringue is a devastating scream in the wilderness. Crikey, another good piece of writing that’s not over-concocted.
A heavy swathe of this book is about suppressed personal feelings between the women of the family and their knights errant, can I, can’t I, how is it possible I feel this way, make a date, break a date, fall into those eyes, I’m lost, no, I’ve changed my mind, rejected, the shame, a life alone, despair, I’ve made the worst mistake of my life, come back!, I’m overcome, I’m yours, whisk me. Succulence does need time to develop, so these threads take a lot of pages to work through as characters who can’t express their feelings associate their love with edible pleasures. How to make a Canadian quilt? Is it just me or are these characters all different kinds of attractive puddings, wholesome ingredients of the story that could go together in different combinations?
With apologies to the author, I have to find some small aspect to challenge the perfection of all this or the other critics would circle around me, turn their backs and snip off my buttons [how do you do that by the way? Without looking?]: In Meringue, the technique and artistry of gourmet food preparation is not elaborated upon, which suggests it is more of a lifestyle romance than a cook book, which is fair enough or I would have bought a cook book, but I think that’s a shame because I wanted to interact with this book, to hear a reproducible and authentic sauce constructed one fresh herb at a time, including how an experienced professional saves it, with élan, when something messes up. When a life messes up, can they salvage and transform it in the same way, perhaps discovering something better? Can calories be teased into philosophy? There’s a lot of talk about food and the craft is shown to have happened as trays come out of the oven but the final product is there with its fancy name but without the method, so the author has embraced and communicated their passion for food (associated with love and home) but perhaps is less passionate about the process of converting raw ingredients into a dish. Yes, it’s an art-form but show us some sculpting and not just the sculpture, as Ang Lee’s master chef Chu does when he inflates the chicken with his breath and Juliette Binoche does when she shows her understudy how to make Nipples of Venus. This doesn’t spoil the book; it’s just me being pedantic.
Anyway, there was one exception: “The eggs should be separated cold but need to be at room temperature when you whisk them.” Knowledge is a wonderful thing, unless reading this book costs me a tooth. I’ve already looked up the chef that all of this stems from, Francois Massialot (1660-1733), and started foodie side-tracking. He was the first to publish the crème brûlée recipe as well, so there’s the sequel already potted into a ramekin for you.
I was going to give this feel-good story four and a bit stars but then it had a great ending, so up it went.
“At that moment the first firecracker whizzed up into the dark sky, exploded and sprouted into a multitude of luminous trails, falling down like dazzling raindrops toward the ground.”
This isn’t about a chef inhabiting a zone of artistry and weaving magic with their spatula. This is about a woman who has struggled all her life for her children, to give them a loving heart for a home and make them complete, at last. Meringue is where the familial circle starts and where it all ends and, of course, it has to have a gooey middle.
Is it humanly possible to read Meringue by Christine Lemieux and not make a meringue at the end? Apparently it isn’t because the oven’s on. I’m so impressionable.
December 19, 2015
Welcome to Lake Humphrey, a small town outside of Montreal, where the residents connected to a French inspired restaurant are about to get some unsolicited angelic help with their love life. June, the owner of the restaurant Meringue, mother of three daughters whose lives are to be upended just when June is considering a long awaited trip. To top things off for June a famous French chef has bought the house next door and has big plans for a French restaurant. Things get worse and worse for June when her daughters do not heed her advice, her whimsical sister makes a surprise visit for an undetermined length of time, and she is failing to find fault with her new neighbour who shows her nothing but kindness. Eventually all turns out as it should, or the best it can be for most characters.
So this novel has all the ingredients to be a cute little romantic novel but the writing is in desperate need of good edit. The dialogue is off and feelings of "torment" and "heartbreak" aren't believable. I think the author would have been better off sticking with a simplistic plotline. There were some dark themes that were out of place, and too many characters had things going on. As a reader I was unable to sympathize with any of them.
The characters are all clichés; June the hard-hearted single Mom, Hazel the whimsical spirit who follows her psychic intuition to decide where to travel to next, Willa the town's Dear Abby and her friend Maureen the believer in tough love, Jake the hot bodied man who is not used to being turned down, Owen the romantic brooding writer, Ruth the women who gave up everything for her husband only to discover she's happier on her own... etc...
The story is told by the angelic presence who is "assigned" this job....(we are never told what "the job" actually is... It is easy to forget this is even a factor in the novel. Suddenly a sentence like "I gave him a nudge in he right direction...." will be thrown in to remind us this ghost, or angel, or whatever is helping these people along...Personally I could have done without this whole aspect and would have enjoyed the book a little more without it.
The one plus in this novel, I have to say, is the writer's clear passion for food. I think that if she focused more on a food war between the two restaurants then had the two chefs get together it would have been a super cute romance novel!
I received a free copy of this novel through goodreads giveaways
So this novel has all the ingredients to be a cute little romantic novel but the writing is in desperate need of good edit. The dialogue is off and feelings of "torment" and "heartbreak" aren't believable. I think the author would have been better off sticking with a simplistic plotline. There were some dark themes that were out of place, and too many characters had things going on. As a reader I was unable to sympathize with any of them.
The characters are all clichés; June the hard-hearted single Mom, Hazel the whimsical spirit who follows her psychic intuition to decide where to travel to next, Willa the town's Dear Abby and her friend Maureen the believer in tough love, Jake the hot bodied man who is not used to being turned down, Owen the romantic brooding writer, Ruth the women who gave up everything for her husband only to discover she's happier on her own... etc...
The story is told by the angelic presence who is "assigned" this job....(we are never told what "the job" actually is... It is easy to forget this is even a factor in the novel. Suddenly a sentence like "I gave him a nudge in he right direction...." will be thrown in to remind us this ghost, or angel, or whatever is helping these people along...Personally I could have done without this whole aspect and would have enjoyed the book a little more without it.
The one plus in this novel, I have to say, is the writer's clear passion for food. I think that if she focused more on a food war between the two restaurants then had the two chefs get together it would have been a super cute romance novel!
I received a free copy of this novel through goodreads giveaways
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 29, 2015
I won this book from Goodreads.
It's the story of a divorced mother who runs a bake shop, and her 3 daughters. It starts out fine, telling her back story but then starts to veer off into silly and unbelievable. People keep "smirking" but then the following conversation doesn't really fit in with that expression, I got half way through the book and gave up as I just really couldn't care about how it was all going to turn out.
It's the story of a divorced mother who runs a bake shop, and her 3 daughters. It starts out fine, telling her back story but then starts to veer off into silly and unbelievable. People keep "smirking" but then the following conversation doesn't really fit in with that expression, I got half way through the book and gave up as I just really couldn't care about how it was all going to turn out.
October 5, 2015
A must read!
Christine Lemieux wrote a wonderful novel about love:
Love for life,
Love for family,
Love for freedom,
and, of course:
Love for good food !
The characters are truly endearing.
Can't wait for a sequel !
Christine Lemieux wrote a wonderful novel about love:
Love for life,
Love for family,
Love for freedom,
and, of course:
Love for good food !
The characters are truly endearing.
Can't wait for a sequel !
January 15, 2016
Excellent story. Several interesting characters - mother - sister - daughters - friends and a French chef. Stories are intertwined at several points keeping readers interested to see where the story leads. Absolutely an enjoyable book.
January 3, 2016
Magical! As a reader I fell in love with this little town and its occupants. I can hardly wait for the sequel! Meringue is a refreshing and inspiring read.
January 3, 2016
The author has a beautiful and colorful way of telling a story about love, family, reconnecting, and delicious food! Loved it!
September 15, 2016
This book is a delight. I plan to read it again. It's well written, well edited and enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews