Joyful, Maupin-esque comedy
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Isabelle is a food writer without a job when a chance to redeem herself literally falls into her lap: former teen soap siren and current wild child Molly Babcock needs to revitalise her image, as well as deliver a cookbook for an advance that she’s already spent. Isabelle is just desperate enough and fanatic enough about food to take the opportunity, figuring that she’ll just get Molly’s take on food and then squirrel herself away and get the job done. Little does she know that Molly needs a friend right now and Isabelle is the only candidate…

I absolutely loved this. I got huge Maupin vibes with the grotesques that Isabelle is surrounded by until they let their masks fall away when they need to be real with her, whereas all along Isabelle is the only real one. The romance is lovely but unreal, however, this is a comedy so it doesn’t need to be real but the main character does have to get her wishes, and she does, in spades.

Five stars - just joyful!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for the ARC.

When Isabella Pasternack loses her job at a food magazine after a disastrous video shoot, she reluctantly takes on ghostwriting a cookbook for Molly Babcock, a once-famous actress whose scandals have eclipsed her stardom—and who can barely tell a whisk from a spatula. What begins as a desperate gig quickly turns into a messy, funny, and unexpectedly tender story about food, ambition, and the strange friendships that reshape our lives.

Roberts balances biting satire of foodie culture with genuine warmth, capturing everything from the pretension of influencer kitchens to the comfort of a simple, well-cooked meal. Isabella is a brilliantly drawn narrator: prickly, witty, vulnerable, and deeply relatable. Her uneasy partnership with the chaotic, self-destructive Molly makes for some laugh-out-loud moments, but also surprising emotional resonance. Along the way, there’s romance, family drama, and plenty of mouthwatering food writing that will leave you craving butter, garlic, and one perfect egg.

Hilarious, heartfelt, and satisfyingly original, Food Person is both a comedy of manners and a story about finding your voice in an often ridiculous world. Perfect for fans of The Bear, Good Material, and anyone who has ever found solace in a cookbook.

'When twenty-something Isabella Pasternack is fired from her job at a digital food magazine, she accepts a thankless job for the pay check: ghost write the very past-due cookbook for a once-beloved thirty-something actress, Molly Babcock.'

And so starts the story that will make you laugh, make you hungry and make you want to read more. This is a book witty, heart-warming, fun, tasty and so much more. It is entertaining, has great characters and of course I do love any book about food. This book has it all and will keep you reading well into the night. Such great writing and even better reading.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I loved this book!

Maybe because im a foodie or maybe because how fantastic the story was,
The characters were all realistic and overall it was a really good read

I really wanted to love this book as I really loved the premise. However, the main character annoyed me with the victim mentality.

I enjoyed the food references and this made me hungry!

I so wanted to love this book, but unfortunately I ultimately thought it was just middling. Isabella felt like such a victim in her own life, and I thought that some of the characters really hewed to stereotypes (particularly her mother). I did love the depictions of food and New York's dining scene, and the little tidbits behind the scenes of writing a cookbook.

Thank you for the opportunity to have an advanced copy of your book! I really enjoy having early access to books and getting an insight into how book feedback is gained. Thanks :)

A deliciously entertaining romp of a novel. I've seen so many people reference The Bear and The Devil Wears Prada as appropriate sources for this and those definitely track, but make it less intense and much funnier. I had such a fantastic time reading this and loved seeing Roberts' love for food and all things culinary shine through his prose.

Food Person follows Isabella as she loses her food-writing job and, by chance, snags a ghostwriting gig for a celebrity’s cookbook. I found myself laughing out loud at the satirical writing, the laser-focused lens on writing, ghostwriting and celebrity-dom, and marvelled at the glorious foodie descriptions. Roberts unflinchingly creates a raucous world where the vapid meet the meek, and I really enjoyed following as Isabella steps into her own, encountering plenty of kitchen and publishing mishaps along the way.

Very easy to read and I enjoyed Roberts' references to the NYC food scene, but ultimately the writing let the title down massively. Our protagonist was very passive and I didn't know why anyone would feel anything about her (positive or negative), and the other characters felt very one-dimensional (with the exception of Jeannie).

This is fun, humorous contemporary fiction themed about a food writer who is given the task of ghost writing the cookbook of an intolerable Z-list party girl. It's a great concept and I really enjoyed the commentary on influencer culture and the publishing world, the exploration of the relationship between food and memories and the New York City setting. There are moments of seriousness (themes of grief for multiple characters and our protagonist dealing with a mother with mental health issues) but overall it's a lighthearted, easy read that kept me turning the pages.

3.5 ⭐️ This was completely unexpected and I enjoyed it a lot, even though it’s not my normal fare. The cover caught my attention and I couldn’t resist.
A comedy drama, very much in the style of The Devil Wears Prada but with a culinary vibe. The author's love of food and the world of cookery is evident throughout.
Isabella is a food writer who is obsessed with cook books, and dreams of writing her own. When she's offered the opportunity to ghost write one, saying yes changes her life forever.

This ticks off my list of auto request topics quite nicely: rich people behaving badly, food, food writing in a big city, and publishing. I was really rooting for Izzy and though the conclusion to her article wasn’t what I wanted, I loved the character growth and the mother-daughter relationships.

This wasn’t what I expected from the cover - I have the Uk one with bread legs!

Isabella is a lovable character at a difficult time in her life and it is very easy to be empathetic towards her and her life misfortunes

I would read this again, I would recommend it too.

I received this from NetGalley - thank you!

A solid debut; this book made me very hungry, and it is clear the author knows their stuff when it comes to food and restaurants. I'm not sure that really translated into a romantic comedy novel. So many of the characters were unlikeable, it felt difficult to root for any of them.
The book did avoid a lot of the usual tropes, and there were interesting plot points involving family ties, but the author didn't go deep enough to make them feel of value. Lots of the relationships had quick easy resolutions that unfortunately didn't feel believable. Overall this love letter to cookbooks and their writers gets a 3 out of 5 from me.

This is a quick witted, funny book in the tradition of writers like Nora Ephron. I liked the premise of the difficult star and ghost writer working on a cookbook. There's a great cast of amusing characters and the New York setting came alive.. Sometimes the scenes didn't quite land for me but the writing was evocative and vivid.
I'm the opposite of a foodie and am the pickles eater ever, so I'm a tough crowd as I was constantly overcoming my disgust at the food descriptions but for a food lover, I imagine this could be a diet breaker.
Promising debut

The experience of reading this book was incredibly enjoyable, filled with both heart and humor., immersing myself in the narrative. Moreover, the story had a delightful way of stirring up my appetite, adding yet another layer to my overall enjoyment.

2.5/5 stars. I finished it, but I'm irritated about it. I feel my thoughts are best summed up in this sentence: "This book is a debut. It shows."

'Food Person' is a piece of contemporary fiction (I couldn't even begin to put a genre on it) about a food writer called Isabella who gets hired to ghostwrite a cookbook for a vapid celebrity called Molly Babcock who wants to turn her trashed career around. Isabella is a devotee of the cult of food and therefore, has strong morals and standards about how a cookbook should be written. Molly hasn't eaten carbs in years. I think you can see how things will progress from here.

I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Packaged with a different cover, this could easily have been a contemporary romance between a ghostwriter and a hot chef who work on this cookbook for an annoying celebrity. I kept waiting for something new to be offered - an idea, a concept, a plot - and it never came. I don't think the book is particularly well written from a structural standpoint. We go round and round in circles with these characters, never quite progressing either way. There's one moment that's really strong and interesting - and we get the most saccharine response from it ever devised.

Isabella is awful as a protaganist. Her 'I can't write this cookbook because I want to be a proper food writer' schtick got real tired, real fast. And she is, ultimately, an incredibly passive character. Things happen to her, she doesn't drive the plot she just reacts to it. Someone else's mistake gets her a contact, someone's else's tragedy sets her free, someone tells her (Multiple people tell her actually) to loosen her morals and just get on with the crappy job which she was always going to do anyway. Is it any wonder I spent half the book silently yelling to myself 'GROW A SPINE WOMAN' to a character who just comes off as naïve, stupid and, ultimately, just a shitty person.

All the characters in this book suck. They're just awful people. Gabe is the one exception and he has about 5 minutes of page time. Suck doesn't necessarily mean they're badly written - I think Jeannie is the exception here - but the others are clunkily handled, particularly Mollie and Fiona. There's a conflict between Fiona and Isabella that's very underdeveloped - so much so that I didn't work out WHY the conflict was there until one of the characters spelled it out on the page. Isabella was the worst for me, I imagine because we spent the most time with her and therefore, her lack of development or growth as a character in any capacity was the most obvious. She's an unpleasant person, both unable to stick up for herself while simultaneously carrying around this air of superiority to other people that she uses to justify shitty actions. There's this whole plotline about a binder of recipes Molly's mother had and it takes Isabella until THE END OF THE BOOK to work out that those recipes could be incredibly triggering for Molly and her abusive childhood. THE END OF THE BOOK. I cannot believe for a second this girl grew up in New York City.

The ending is rushed. There is a natural ending point where everything falls apart, but the book just continues on to deliver a weird happy ending that feels much less satisfying than the big moment did. The author felt the need to tie everything up in a bow and make the main characters happy and friends and ??? You had a great ending already, you didn't need the last fifty pages.

The foodie aspects are good and god, justice for Gabe, because he's the one good person in 300+ pages, but otherwise, skip this one. It's nothing you haven't seen before.

I really enjoyed this book. Pretty much every character was so unlikeable which is always my favourite type of character. The protagonist is so selfish and so rude to everyone around her, there’s a point where she tells her mother that she’s not self centred and I was honestly on the verge of shouting out loud. She throws everyone under the bus and nothing is ever her fault in her eyes. I love a flawed protagonist so this worked for me but if you don’t I’d maybe give this one a miss. I liked all the food talk and I find the concept of ghostwriters so interesting so it was a fun look behind the curtain of that! It was a nice easy read.

Highly entertaining novel. Pace started off a little bit slow but I enjoyed the writing style enough to persevere and overall found the book very enjoyable

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.