Thanks to the publisher via NetGalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I'll start with a confession - this book probably, objectively, deserves a better rating than I can will myself to part with. The Yellow Kitchen is about three friends, Claude, Guilia and Sophie, who are in their late-twenties, trying to navigate adulthood in post-Brexit 2019 London. Vialleron clearly sets out to explore the complex nature of female friendship post-university in that tricky part of life where it can feel like you and your peers are at wildly different stages of life. The yellow kitchen itself becomes a place of care and convalescence where the three friends can come together, safe from the outside world.

Everything about this novel should have worked for me - I, too, am a young woman in my mid/late twenties living in London. I think it might have been the way in which this book hit too close to home that desperately put me off it. Where the use of food and cooking should have felt like the real strength of this book, it often had the effect of making the three women feel a bit sickly sweet. The food that is mentioned - the oysters at the beginning, lemon meringue pie, etc. - felt indulgent and bourgeois to the point of nausea. The trip to Lisbon also felt out of touch and instagram-perfect. The whole thing read like a colourless social media feed, or a really beige Pinterest board. The overall effect was of a narrative that was determined to keep me at arm's length. The author herself seems to lack self-awareness of the indulgence of her characters' lifestyles, which is what I think makes the whole thing feel hollow and hopeless. I spent the whole time reading this feeling like I was having a very benign nightmare. On a pettier level, nothing rubs me the wrong way like rich girls who insist on calling their parents by their first names - especially if that parent's name is something as posh as Allegra! Eughhh.

I felt a little like this novel was guilty of the navel-gazing that Sally Rooney is accused of, and conspicuously less successful at interpolating real-world news events than, say, Ali Smith. There are certainly glimmers of a good novel in here - at its best this novel made me feel seen, or struck upon some quirk of my character I hadn't seen reflected before. However, its writing felt self-conscious, and a little overwrought, particularly in its dialogue, which felt more than slightly affected.

This book had some potential, and will definitely be enjoyed by many readers, though sadly not me.

Claude, Sophie and Giulia are three friends living together in London in 2019. We learn of the complexity of their female friendship, sexuality, love, culture and childhood memories. In the Yellow Kitchen, the hub of their lives, they discuss politics, Brexit, relationships, food and drink. But things change after a trip to Portugal.
I found it an interesting read: it’s well written and full of ideas but something was missing for me and I’m not sure what. Sadly, I just didn’t care enough to love it.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

I really enjoyed this tale of three friends and particularly the descriptions of food. However i lost interest when two of the central protagonists embarked on a relationship which I did not expect from the blurb. It is becoming a cliche in books I seem to be picking up from Netgalley lately that they all turn into books about hidden lesbianism or people becoming gay and though it can be an interesting subject I found myself losing interest as I had been attracted by a tale of friendship and food and have little time for romances in fiction. I am afarid this book became the victim of it's own rather misleading blurb,

I found the descriptions of food and cooking to be appealing and the whole book was beautifully written. However the author for some inexplicable reason decided to shoehorn a lot of talk about Brexit and historical facts about refugees which got in the way of the plot and seemed both boring and irrelevant. This isn't something that I would look for outside of non fiction and it wasn't at all clear why the choice was made to include.

Overall this was an enjoyable read and I would certainly be interested to see what the author produces next,

It's a well written story, great description of the book, and a strong start. It stopped keeping me hooked when the relationship between Claude and Sophie started as it felt too detached or so I felt.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I didn't really get on with this one. Though the depictions of food were great and very vividly realised within the prose, but everything felt very detached. There were so many side characters and so many interior thoughts being realised that I totally lost focus as I was reading it. Not for me, but for those who enjoy more literary novels, you'll probably get a lot from it.

Really enjoyed this story of 3 friends. Definitely didn't expect what happened from the blurb but could see it as it unraveled. Thank you

The Yellow Kitchen is a novel about food, friendship, and love, as three friends navigate 2019. Claude, Sophie, and Giulia are three women who live in London, centred around the yellow kitchen in Claude's flat where she bakes them food and they share their lives. When a trip to Lisbon causes Claude and Sophie to explore their attraction to each other, the three friends' dynamic is changed, amidst a tempestuous year in politics.

I was drawn to the premise of this book, which is written both from the first perspective of each of the three main characters, and also from a third person omniscient narrative voice. The effect of this was to navigate both the broader happenings, and some of the characters' pasts and emotions. Overall, there's not a huge amount of plot in The Yellow Kitchen, as it is more about character development, though with three protagonists I didn't always feel like I knew them all that well, which might well be the point. The characters have their flaws, and the book depicts complexity of friendship, not just in navigating romantic love and attraction with friends, but also in ways in which all three of them interact, and their tendencies to not communicate well or not get along. They don't always understand each others' lives, but they can find ways to get past that, which is particularly noticeable around politics and their differences there.

I liked the depictions of food in the book, which are crucial as the title suggests, and the ways in which the characters, especially Claude, use food in navigating emotions. However, I found that the book wasn't always that engrossing, and the relationship between Claude and Sophie, which should've been a deeply interesting heart of the book, or at least the blurb suggests so, was just okay, not quite immersing the reader into the difficulties of navigating what kind of relationship you want with someone, romantic or otherwise. There was perhaps missed potential in my opinion, as the book was stylish but didn't quite have the substance that satisfied my tastes, at least.