Book 47 Eat Your Heart Out

Eat Your Heart Out by Shirley Goldberg fulfill the category “Book with Cutlery on the Cover for the PopSugar 2023 Reading Challenge. I worked hard on this one. I consulted Shirley personally to verify a knife sat on the cutting board on the cover.

I read several books for the category. The first one was a Dexter title, and I already posted about it. I understood the character better by reading rather than watching the show because I got into Dexter’s head. On the show, I saw the smile of the exquisite Michael C. Hall and not the tension behind it. The second novel I tried to read for this category (and I say tried because I did not finish it) was Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. It was hard to read. I haven’t read many books by him, save Fight Club and Damned. I’ll be honest. I didn’t understand Fight Club on the page, but I loved Damned. Choke grossed me out, and I’m an avid horror fan. I’ve read almost every Stephen King and Clive Barker, who is even grosser. I could not finish Choke. 

Lucky for me, my friend Shirley’s book was on sale, and I noticed there was a knife on the cover. I grabbed it and read it in a flash. 

Eat Your Heart Out is a culinary romance. Unfortunately, Ms. Goldberg did not give us any recipes, and I promise to harass her for all our sake. The story is a romance between two thirty-something. It was great to pick up a romance that wasn’t about twenty-year-olds finding their way. These two people are teachers, grownups with proper jobs. Alex recently had gastric bypass surgery and is working hard to get his life and his body in shape. Dana lost out on a great job to her ex-boyfriend, who broke up with her over text. Both have a lot on their plate (pun intended) in this friends-to-lovers romance.

I loved watching the build between these two. The slow realization that they needed each other, they wanted each other, and they wanted to be together had me on the edge of my seat. I wanted to yell at them! But they were friends, and they couldn’t do that. He feared all Dana saw was his former fat self. She viewed him as a colleague. Look what happened the last time she dated a coworker; the man stole her job. The novel had great stuff about exercising, learning to listen to yourself, and the wonderful food. I was hungry throughout the entire book.

The two try dating other people with terrible results. Not to mention their barracuda of a principal driving them crazy. Of course, they discover real romance in the end. The couple ends up together. It was satisfying to see two people struggling with body, work, and personal issues find someone who understood them.

I give Eat Your Heart Out by Shirley Goldberg Five Gourmet Dinners—your treat!

This was the second in Ms. Goldberg’s Starting Over series. The first book, Middle Ageish, is on sale for $0.99, and the third, A Little Bit of Lust, arrives on Dec. 7.