Laura Castoro, Icing on the Cake

Icing on the Cake

Laura Castoro

Mira, Jan 2007, $13.95

ISBN: 0778324133

Tired of advertising and even more so of her spouse Ted, Liz Talbot returns to her Jersey Girl roots when her grandparents move to Phoenix, leaving her the Bagel Emporium in Upper Montclair; as always supportive Ted ditched his now physically laboring spouse for Brandi, a younger yuppie model. Meanwhile, after five years of baking with carbs in spite of the bakery's public enemy number one Atkins and other diet fads, her enterprise is in financial trouble.

Ted proves much more supportive in death than in life as Mr. Ad Agency accidentally dies, but never changed his will from Talbot wife one to Talbot wife two. Thus Liz owns a failing ad agency to go along with her failing bakery while the outraged widow two files lawsuits faster than bagels can be made with the substance of the middle of a bagel. Thus she owns two businesses going under while also caring as the sandwich generation for her twin daughters and her mom. Liz obtains a respite when she meets an attractive hunk at a wedding, but soon marks him as off limits after she slept with him since he is food consultant Marcus James, who could make or break her beloved bakery and might assume her guilty of using him.

Poking jabs at America's diet flavor of the month, ICING ON THE CAKE is a delightful, middle age, chick-lit romance starring a wonderful bread maker whose first person perspective is amusing yet poignant as she observes the chaos that threatens to engulf her like a black hole. Liz makes the tale as she struggles with her two businesses, her relatives, her late-ex-husband's widow, and her heart with the ICING ON THE CAKE being the cat fight.

Harriet Klausner