Michelle Dsouza
Hungry Eyes
I almost gave up on this in the first twenty pages. Not because it was bad, but because I had never read a memoir before and kept waiting for a plot that was never coming.
Then I looked up Dawn O'Porter and fell completely in love with her. After that, the book sailed.
Hungry Eyes follows the moments and meals that built Dawn into the person she is. Her beginnings are genuinely sad. She lost both parents young and was raised by her Aunty Jane in Guernsey, and you feel how much that shaped her on every single page. But this is not a sad book. It is the story of someone who came into herself with real honesty and humor and a lot of food, and watching that happen was, genuinely, an honor to read.
The writing is raw. Not raw in a performed, look-how-honest-I-am way. Actually raw. The kind where you laugh and then feel slightly guilty for laughing, and then Dawn makes the same joke a beat later and you realize you were supposed to laugh. I found myself giggling with her constantly, and I know I could listen to her tell her stories all day long.
The book is detailed enough that you feel like you lived inside the stories rather than just reading about them. Her writing is authentic enough that by the end you feel like you know who she is personally and who she loves deeply.
Aunty Jane is in a category of her own. The way Dawn writes about her is so pure it makes you want to call your own person, whoever that is for you.
There are recipes in this book. I made the Ultimate Mac N Cheese and the Panettone Bread Pudding within the same week. I am working out extra hard as a direct consequence and I have no one to blame but Dawn O'Porter and myself, in equal measure.
By the end I just wanted more. More stories, more meals, more Aunty Jane.
This was my first ever memoir and my first NetGalley ARC, and I did not expect to feel this way about either. Four stars and a growing suspicion I have been missing out on an entire genre.
I almost gave up on this in the first twenty pages. Not because it was bad, but because I had never read a memoir before and kept waiting for a plot that was never coming.
Then I looked up Dawn O'Porter and fell completely in love with her. After that, the book sailed.
Hungry Eyes follows the moments and meals that built Dawn into the person she is. Her beginnings are genuinely sad. She lost both parents young and was raised by her Aunty Jane in Guernsey, and you feel how much that shaped her on every single page. But this is not a sad book. It is the story of someone who came into herself with real honesty and humor and a lot of food, and watching that happen was, genuinely, an honor to read.
The writing is raw. Not raw in a performed, look-how-honest-I-am way. Actually raw. The kind where you laugh and then feel slightly guilty for laughing, and then Dawn makes the same joke a beat later and you realize you were supposed to laugh. I found myself giggling with her constantly, and I know I could listen to her tell her stories all day long.
The book is detailed enough that you feel like you lived inside the stories rather than just reading about them. Her writing is authentic enough that by the end you feel like you know who she is personally and who she loves deeply.
Aunty Jane is in a category of her own. The way Dawn writes about her is so pure it makes you want to call your own person, whoever that is for you.
There are recipes in this book. I made the Ultimate Mac N Cheese and the Panettone Bread Pudding within the same week. I am working out extra hard as a direct consequence and I have no one to blame but Dawn O'Porter and myself, in equal measure.
By the end I just wanted more. More stories, more meals, more Aunty Jane.
This was my first ever memoir and my first NetGalley ARC, and I did not expect to feel this way about either. Four stars and a growing suspicion I have been missing out on an entire genre.