The beginning of The Chef’s Secret starts a bit slowly, or maybe I was just disappointed that it wasn’t set in ancient Rome like Feast of Sorrow. (I didn’t read the NetGalley blurb, I just saw by Crystal King and immediately requested it.) But I like medieval Italy too, with all the dramatic poisonings and vendetta, and this is exactly that style of drama.

Kitchen apprentice Giovanni isn’t too surprised to inherit his Uncle Bartolomeo’s kitchen tools and recipe books.  But he’s shocked to see how much money his uncle the chef has left him, and he’s also been left the guardian of several coded diaries that Bartolomeo wants burned.

Naturally, Giovanni doesn’t burn any of his uncle’s journals. and that leads him down a path of forbidden romance, theft, secret children, kidnapping, revenge, and lots of murder. The story of Bartolomeo’s youth starts out with a sweet crush on an unattainable noblewoman, which blossoms into secret romance, and grows more and more dramatic, until a pope gets murdered in cold blood, and I was basically reading and nodding along, like yeah, that’ll happen.  Gotta watch out for secret chambers and poison rings. Gotta watch out for generations of vendetta.

Despite the rising body count, the novel’s not gross, though. Sometimes I can’t handle thrillers because I don’t like when people’s internal organs are on the outside (which is quite a reasonable standard for entertainment, although slightly awkward for the wife of a horror writer). This book had a lot of tension (POISON AND VENDETTA!!!) without being gory, and the tension never came from my fear that the story was about to turn gory.

You’ll need a snack, or five, while you read this. Crystal King describes Giovanni and Bartolomeo’s dishes with delicious details.

Overall, this is a solid page-turner, with warm and believable characters, a historical drama set just down the hall from the more famous histories of the popes.

This is my Review of the Month for the review collection on LovelyAudiobooks.info