I’m a massive Jack Monroe fan so I loved this book. Easy to follow, tasty food, great pictures.
I highly recommend this book to beginners in cooking or the most advanced cook.

Really liked the premise of this book and while most of the recipes do contain healthy ingredients that will boost your mood and provide good nutrition on bad mood days, I found that the bulk of the recipes weren't for me.

Not my cup of tea. Recipes sound unappetizing to me. Stories are interesting and fun and I understand the purpose of the recipes but just not the way I want to eat.

Jack Monroe always provides great cookbooks with interesting recipes that are both realistic and enjoyable! No long pages of ingredients for a recipe you will be cooking until 2am, these are meals that will leave you feeling nourished in your body, even whilst life is potentially hurting your mind and soul. Jack is like a portion of homemade comforting soup, good for you and enjoyable at the same time!.

I do suffer with blue days, the day where they drag you under and you know that provided yourself with someting anything to eat is a good iea. however, facing any kind of cooking just wipes you out, Jack has been there, done it and wrote the book.

Recipes in this are perfect for the overwhelming days, I have referred to it often and even got a printed copy as well.

Helpful tips but not for me. I can see why people would enjoy this book I was looking for something a bit more interactive with some recipes.

I loved the concept of this book and thought this was a book I could definitely make use of. I found the authors anecdotes of her mental health journey really powerful, moving and engaging . Unfortunately the recipes in this book just did not spark my interest, not many of them really appealed to me. I will definitely try to make the Jaffa Cake mug pudding someday, it sounds like the perfect comfort food for a crappy day!

Great book full of tips and recipes for things to get you fueled even on the days you think like crawling under your duvet and staying there.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this book. I obviously expected some great recipes as in the other fabulous Jack Monroe cookbooks I have, but I suspected that this was going to be a little different when I saw that the foreword was written by Matt Haig, who is someone else I follow on Twitter...
And I was not disappointed at all! So much so that I literally read the whole book in one sitting, bookmarking the recipes I want to try along the way (there were a lot of bookmarks, lol)
I could relate to more in this book than I care to admit in this review, but just reading it was like receiving a virtual foodie hug, and I can’t tell you how lovely that was.
Absolutely worth every one of the 5 stars I am giving it and I would highly recommend it.
My thanks to NetGalley, Bluebird and Jack Monroe for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review.

I love the concept of this book. Making healthy food - or any food at all - can be challenging when you are feeling low. But eating poorly can make you feel worse. It’s a vicious cycle! Food also has the potential to really help. This book makes it simple, providing easy recipes for healthy, inexpensive, tasty and filling food for bad days when turning the oven on or making some toast might feel like a challenge. It doesn’t try to provide a magic ‘fix’ but the recipes provided focus on including ingredients for which there’s scientific backing that they can help to support healthy brain function and to boost mood. Some truly delicious recipes too - I’m particularly enamoured with the breakfast recipes!

I find Jack Monroe interesting and thought the anecdotes highlighting her own mental health struggles were really powerful. That being said, I found the recipes in this book quite disappointing. There are only a few I could manage to cook on one of my bad days and I found a lot of the recipes are too fussy or overly complicated. It misses the mark for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free ecopy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I cannot speak highly enough of Jack Monroe. I've been a reader and admirer of hers since the earliest days of her blog and just cannot say enough good things about the perspective and knowledge she's brought to the political food landscape in this country. I've used recipes from several of her books and her ability to innovate is unrivalled. Her commitment to democratising food, to dismantling stigmas and misinformation around poverty, her eloquence and dignity in the face of judgement and slander is beyond admirable. This particular installment from her is a joyous, playful romp through all of those "guilty pleasure" foods that she puts her own spin on. I love her and everything she does, long may she reign!

The Good Food for Bad Days by Jack Monroe is a recipe book that tries to help make food for when you are feeling poorly or mentally unwell. It is also part memoir with Monroe's reflection on her own mental health and anecdotes about when to eat the dishes.

The introduction covers some of her own battles, and provides details on some foods to eat regularly, alongside essential ingredients and equipment to use.

The book is divided into 9 chapters of recipes (no of recipes) and before the start of each chapter is an anecdote.
- Mugs (7)
- Handy Pots (7)
- Finger Foods (5)
- Breakfast & Brunch (12)
- 15 minutes or less (12)
- One pan (12)
- Take your time (7)
- In the oven (5)
- The Sweet Stuff (10)

The recipes are in metric measurements and throughout the book there are illustrations. Also included with some of the recipes are handy storage instructions, be it in the fridge for a few days or in the freezer for a few months. If a recipe is vegetarian or vegan, it is indicated at the top of the recipe, plus it provides details on the number it serves.

Overall I found this quite a disappointing book of recipes. There were absolutely no photographs of any of the dishes and I didn't like the way the instructions were written - whilst they are in steps, I didn't like the informal style and none of the recipes called out to me to make them.

I received this from Netgalley in return for a honest review.

I have been a fan of Jack Monroe for some time now and was happy to get this book. This is not just a recipe book, it gives us an account of her life and her mental health. She tells us, how different food makes her feel. The recipes are affordable and I can't wait to try them!

Good Food for Bad Days by Jack Monroe is a recipe book to try and help make food for when you are feeling poorly or mentally unwell. The recipes seem easy enough to follow although some of the ingredients seem a little frivolous for what they are for! Also the amount of ingredients for some of the recipes are a lot, I feel you can get the same recipe for less. Personally I probably wouldn’t buy this book as none of these recipes speak to me for when I’m feeling down or upset. It is a lovely book despite that.

The idea is very good and I like the authors' philosophy but I'm not sure this would be the book to go to when you are having a bad day. The recipes are a bit over complex, and for me personally I didn't find many that really appealed to me. When you are having a bad day you need a lift from the book as well, you need to be enticed into the kitchen to cook yourself something nice. However the book is rather drab, no pictures, not very well formatted or spaced out. I realise it is budget friendly and maybe pictures would have been too costly but the format could be improved to make it easier on the eye. Overall a great idea but this is not a book I would want to pick up on a bad day. Hopefully lots of other people will feel very differently and it will be just the thing for them.

I'll tell you what this book reminded me of - in a good way! When my kids were in primary school we did a fundraiser by asking families to send in their favourite family recipes, and we compiled them into a book to sell. This was like that - real recipes from a real person. Nothing fancy, all achievable. A book you might reach for when you were short of time or energy or inspiration, and just pull something together that would work. And Jack's voice is engaging, sympathetic and very readable.

Very appropriate for current times. A combination of this and Tin Can Cook by the same author covers all the lockdown storecupboard recipes you could need.

I will start my review by saying I am not a vegan, vegetarian or restrict my diet in any way and try to have a healthy varied appreciation of food in moderation and there are plenty of recopies I will be trying and already have had the Cacio e Pepe which i loved and will be getting a tub of ice cream to try out the ice cream cake! I know very little about Jack and apart from the odd TV appearance and being a dragon slayer with a certain blogger I have learned so much more about Jacks life because this is much more than a cook book as I like the stories how certain recopies came into existence during Jacks her life and the journey. I 100% recommend this book not just for the recopies but for the unique inspirational positiveness

I was excited to read this book and try out some of the recipes but to be honest I thought this book might not be quite for me.Living in a rural area it can be difficult to find many ingredients in these kinds of books.I was wrong! Most ingredients I either had or could easily find. I did make some recipes from here and they were all delicious and a big hit with my family!

What I did try I really enjoyed though my favourites in this book were the

Apple peanut butter,
Chicken butter
fluffer nut french toast (this was a big hit with my son)
Stewed steak lasagne
and the hot apple pies

So if you are looking for easy to make recipes with store cupboard ingredients then this is the book for you!