William Morrow & Company
Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B?
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For everyone who loved The Bear! An utterly winning, crowd-pleaser of a novel about a disgraced celebrity chef, her striving protégé, and their path through the kitchen to redemption.
Regina Benuzzi is Queenie B--a culinary goddess with Michelin Star restaurants, a bestselling cookbook empire, and multimillion-dollar TV deals. It doesn't hurt that she's gorgeous and curvaceous, with cascading black hair and signature red lips.
She had it all. Until she didn't.
After an epic fall from grace, Queenie B vanishes from the public eye, giving up everything: her husband, her son, and the fame that she'd fought to achieve. Her shows are in rerun, her restaurants still popular, but her disappearance remains a mystery to her legions of fans.
Local line cook Gale Carmichael also knows a thing or two about disaster. Newly sober and struggling, Gale's future dreams don't hold space for culinary stardom; only earning enough to get by. Broke at the end of the week, he finds himself at a local soup kitchen in one of the roughest parts of New Haven, Connecticut. But Gale quickly realizes that the food coming out of the kitchen is not your standard free meal--it is delicious and prepared with gourmet flair.
Gale doesn't recognize Regina, the soup kitchen's cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It's been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale's talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.
Teaching Gale, Regina's passion to create is reignited, and they both glimpse a shot at the redemption that had always seemed out of reach. When Gale is chosen to compete on the hit cooking show, Cut!, it's a turning point for them both.
It's Gale's time to shine. And that means Queenie B might just have to come out of hiding...
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Book Details
ISBN:
9780063393110
EAN:
9780063393110
Binding:
Hardcover
Pages:
336
Authors:
Terri-Lynne Defino
Publisher:
William Morrow & Company
Published Date: 2025-15-04
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Ready to be made into a movie! Great story with solid character development. DeFino approaches the topic of addition with pragmatism with an underlying layer of hope, all while making it a story about food, cooking, family & love. Pick this one up for your beach trip, you won't be disappointed!
OK full disclaimer. I probably would’ve given this a 3 1/2 if half stars were available. I really did like this book. I think in large parts because it deals with kitchen terminology and the art of cooking which I’m very much into. However, I will say the book definitely did not need to be that long. It could’ve been shorter. There was just a lot of downtime in the book where one can easily be bored, especially if they are not into cooking. I did feel like a lot of people could relate to the characters in the book and since I’m from Connecticut, it was also really nice to see some of the places from Connecticut actually make appearance in the book.
I seem to have picked a lot of books dealing with chefs and kitchens lately. This was a good one with Chef Queenie B leaving her family, restaurant empire and life behind . After falling from grace she enjoys cooking at a homeless shelter and is quite happy when Gale, a local cook visits her shelter and knows this is no ordinary food. He convinces her to teach him to cook and together they enter a cooking competition. A well rounded story
Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B was such a fun book! I love watching The Food Network and other cooking competition shows so this book was so fun to binge.Regina (Queenie B) was a cooking goddess and had it all until she didn't. She vanished from the public and has been hiding out in New Haven where she's been running a soup kitchen for the last 10 years in secret. Gale is a local line cook who is newly sober and struggling. After a rough week, he stops by the soup kitchen and ends up volunteering. When he's selected to compete on the hit show Cut! what does that mean for Regina hiding?I loved the behind the scenes look at a cooking competition show liked Chopped. This book was well written, deals with some tough topics around addiction, sobriety, fame and how food can bring us together.I liked the redemption for Queenie and seeing Gale become more confident. These were real and relatable characters. Plus all of the food descriptions had me hungry!If you like a good second chance story and food competition shows you'll love this book!
I really enjoyed this book, it started out a little slow, but then started moving alternating between Regina's past and present, and Gale's story before and after he met Regina.I loved the descriptions of the restaurant life, and the food!Thank you Netgalley and William Morrow for the ARC!
