I especially loved the relationship Francie has with her grandmother. The relationships aren't perfect or sugar coated, but she mostly appreciates and respects her parents. Unlike so many young adult stories that I have read, Francie has a nice relationship with her parents and her grandmother. The friendship triangle that develops when a new girl arrives at school felt very real too. Francie's interest in boys, for example, was mostly innocent with just the right touch of curiousity about the opposite sex. What I mean by that is simply that the author did not try to make her characters mature before they were ready. The entire story felt right for the age range of the characters as well. The main character, Francie, narrated the story with humor and the right amount of self-awareness for a ninth grader. Imagine my surprise when the story turned out to be nothing of a cliche at all, and fresh in a completely familiar way. I planned on reading it anyway because even cliched stories can be great. My first thought was that it was going to be a fairly cliched book, given the description given on the book jacket. The cover caught my eye, and I was looking for a young adult book to read. I picked this book up while standing in line at our library while waiting to check out. Her own special brand of humor touches every aspect of the tale, from her inner monologue during Lorenzo's shirtless cooking to the way she responds to Harold Horvath's advances and how she lights her beautiful hair on fire with a Bunsen burner. One part Alice McKinley, two parts Georgia Nicolson, Francie is a delight. She has started playing the clarinet in order to be in Holly's class, and a music competition paves the way for the teen to travel for free to the same town as Lorenzo Larue's traveling show. The status quo is shaken, however, when a new girl at school squeezes into Holly and Francie's friendship and wreaks havoc on Francie's boyfriend ambitions. When she's not hanging out with her friend Holly, she's watching celebrity chef Lorenzo Larue's show with Nana and entering his cooking contests, as well as keeping busy making a fool out of herself in an attempt to impress her crush and chemistry partner, Tate. Ninth-grader Francie Freewater is most at home in the kitchen: dashing from the counter to the stove, perfecting her recipes, and performing a cooking show for Nana's parrot, Rory.

Recipe for disaster by maureen fergus