First Course, by Jenn Bouchard

A delicious romance stuffed with great food and wonderful characters who will make you cry and laugh when your stomach isn’t growling.

Life is full of surprises, as the saying goes, and as one travels its path one must navigate through swamps and over boulders, the pessimists among us always hearing thunder in the distance and the optimists meeting adversity with a Billy Joel tune. In First Course, Jenn Bouchard takes the reader on a short excursion along life’s path with a beautiful story during which her protagonist, Janie, or as her sister calls her “Jae Jae,” surmounts tragedy while cooking delicious food and cautiously falling in love. Set mostly in Maine, some have called the book a “beach read,” but it’s complex narrator and her compelling observations make it much more than that. In fact, there is only one meaningful scene at the shoreline, at Peak’s Island, near Portland, where the dialogue between Janie and Rocky is certainly more compelling than the view of the ocean.

Crostini and watermelon margaritas early in the story are meant to dampen the disappointment of a runaway boyfriend and loss of a job. The departing boyfriend, Cole, is the novel’s antagonist. He is easy to dislike, particularly if one is put off by self-centered dudes from California. But the real tragedy in the story occurs soon after Janie’s first sip of the margarita, and she is soon on her way to join her sister, Alyssa, in Cape Elisabeth, at the family summer house where, despite its rocky coastline, the story’s swamp of tragedy awaits. What follows is a couple of months, late summer and early fall, through which the author beautifully guides her characters in and out of heartbreak, confusion, and at last triumph. The writing is smooth and the action is evenly paced. The characters are well developed by the author, who magnificently juxtaposes their personalities to highlights their strengths and flaws: the boyfriends, Lance, Mark, Cole and Rocky; Janie’s mother Corinne and Lance’s mother Meredith; Alyssa’s husband, dastardly at first but soon redeemed, and Cole, who gets close to improving, but remains impossible to like. By the end of the novel a reader really knows these people, a tribute to the author’s careful development of them by their interactions with each other and the narrator.

A year elapses near the end of the novel, and closure arrives, as it should in a good romance. But the end is multi-dimensional, believable and yet elegantly uplifting, with a final touch of humor. As Janie says, “My whole life is in one room.” It’s not the customary kiss on the beach at sunset. It’s a wonderful moment, a capsule of sensory appreciation the reader can pocket to enjoy over and over. Oh, and was food mentioned? The books plot is energized with good food, from homemade biscuits with bacon, meatballs, pizza, and spinach and mushroom wantons. We’ll overlook the rancid gorgonzola. Janie had nothing to do with that.

For more about Jenn Bouchard, visit her website https://jennbouchard.com.