About the book, Comfort Foods
- Series: Comfort Stories – but this is a Standalone Novel
- Categories: Contemporary / Second Chance Romance
- Publisher: Fish Tales Publishing
- Date of Publication: October 7, 2020
- Number of Pages: 385 pages
- Scroll down for Giveaway
From the award-winning author of Comfort Plans and Comfort Songs comes a story of two rising stars blitzed by social media. Lacy Cavanaugh and single-dad Rudy Delgardo live a hundred miles apart but meet in the worst possible way. Working at a weekly paper and creating social media for area businesses helps Lacy connect with locals who open her mind to a perspective beyond Instagram. In launching a food-and-wine festival to support Comfort’s new event center, she discovers surprising skills bubbling over, much like the food she’s attempting to cook.
Rudy, on the brink of his restaurant’s takeover, struggles to improve time management so he can create a better relationship with his daughter. Distracted by Lacy and her invitation to the festival, he’s tempted by her beauty, wit, and courage, but as a chef, he rarely gets to enjoy life outside the kitchen. Enemies, illness, and exes add unwelcome spice to the dish they’re concocting—one that will teeter with misunderstanding until the very end.
Will Lacy and Rudy embrace their second chances and discover the perfect seasonings of family, resilience, and grace to create a handwritten recipe of love that will stand the test of time?
Buy, read, and discuss this book:
About the author, Kimberly Fish
Author Kimberly Fish resides in Longview, Texas, and enjoys writing contemporary fiction set in the Hill Country. During the seven years she lived in San Antonio, wandering in and around Comfort, Texas, provided endless space for her imagination to develop stories of women discovering their grit. She studied the small Texas town that had seemingly dug its heels into the limestone and refused modern development and thought that was fertile ground for stories about women remodeling their lives. It made a juxtaposition of place and purpose that was hard to ignore. Plus, anything that takes intentional effort has a much higher value than the things that come easily—Comfort personifies this, and the novels remind readers that anything worth having is worth the work.
Comfort Foods is the third full-length novel in the set, Fiction from the Texas Hill Country, and follows behind the award-winning novels Comfort Plans and Comfort Songs. A novella, Emeralds Mark the Spot, is available as a free eBook download to subscribers of the incredibly sporadic newsletter at kimberlyfish.com and is the original story from which all other Comfort novels grew.
Connect with Kimberly:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
My Thoughts
Kimberly Fish is one of those authors you can trust to always tell a great story. She writes realistic, interesting characters, who feel like people you’d want to know (with a few exceptions who are still vividly drawn, but so annoying you hope they walk off a cliff – I’m looking at you, Amy Marsh). The fact that she can create such a visceral reaction to antagonist who exists mostly in references made by the protagonist is proof of her craft. Ms. Fish is an amazing writer.
Fish’s latest novel, Comfort Foods is an amazing book.
At 385 pages, this novel is a meaty, satisfying story that is as much about reinventing yourself as it is about finding love at different stages of your life. Protagonist Lacy Cavanaugh is a former singer and social influencer who has been put in tech jail after using her powers to expose the truth about the afore-mentioned Amy Marsh. leaves the bright lights of Dallas for the Texas Hill Country town of Comfort, where her sister raises goats and makes cheese, and her friend runs a lavender farm. If that sounds more like a vacation than a punishment, than you, like me, will love this book.
Lacy comes off as a bit self-entitled at first, but I quickly grew to find her charming. She’s pretty, funny, smart, and a loyal friend, and though she’s forbidden from posting to her own social media accounts, is happy to help her sister and friends maximize their exposure. She’s the kind of woman who does a lot of things well, and just hasn’t settled into a really productive and positive niche. Even though I’m a couple of decades older than Lacy, I really identified with that aspect of her personality. (I sometimes joke that I’m a professional dilettante.)
Lacy may be the central character, but the other people we meet, in Comfort and a hundred miles away in Austin, are equally compelling. Rudy Delgardo, a successful chef and divorced father to a precious little girl named Luna, is dynamic. His conflict over his responsibilities to his job and to his child are totally plausible – things every working parent must work through. It’s no surprise when he’s reluctant to enter into a relationship.
But Lacy and Rudy aren’t the only paring in this novel. Fish gave us two fantastic characters in Frank, owner of the local paper and Lacy’s boss/mentor and Gloria, Frank’s ex-wife, who is also Lacy’s landlady and mother-figure (because every woman needs a mother, no matter her age – and I love that Kimberly Fish understands that.) Watching the combination of tenderness and pricklyness between the two is both funny and endearing – I’d happily read a whole novel based on just them.
Kale, AJ (the lavender farmer), and their spouses round out the regulars in Comfort, and each one is a perfect voice in the chorus that is this novel.
And then there is Comfort itself. This fictional Texas town is as much a setting as a character, and after reading two of Fish’s previous books set there, it’s a town I wish I could visit in real life and not just in the pages of a novel.
Overall, Comfort Foods is a wonderful slice of life story with just enough romance to keep things interesting, but without being overpowering. It has scenes with great food. It has moments of perfect sunsets over fields of lavender. It is the perfect book for these January days when we are past the holidays, stuck in the winter doldrums, and overwhelmed by the realities of the Pandemic and politics.
Kimberly Fish is an author who always hits the right notes with her stories. In Comfort Foods those notes are herbs and spices instead of chords, but they still harmonize beautifully.
Goes well with a burger made on a backyard grill, homemade French fries, and a cold “Dublin” Dr. Pepper (the kind made with real sugar and sold in glass bottles
Giveaway
ONE WINNER
GRANDPRIZE (US only):
Signed copy of COMFORT FOODS +
Ina Garten’s MODERN COMFORT FOOD
Ends Midnight, CST, January 22, 2021
Visit the Other Great Blogs on This Tour
or visit the Lone Star Literary Life tour page
| 1/12/21 | Guest Post | Hall Ways Blog |
| 1/12/21 | Review | Sydney Young, Stories |
| 1/13/21 | Excerpt | Forgotten Winds |
| 1/14/21 | Review | Jennie Reads |
| 1/14/21 | Author Interview | Texas Book Lover |
| 1/15/21 | Review | The Clueless Gent |
| 1/16/21 | Review | Jennifer Silverwood |
| 1/17/21 | Guest Post | All the Ups and Downs |
| 1/18/21 | Review | Momma on the Rocks |
| 1/18/21 | Character Interview | StoreyBook Reviews |
| 1/19/21 | Review | Book Bustle |
| 1/19/21 | Guest Post | That’s What She’s Reading |
| 1/20/21 | Review | Carpe Diem Chronicles |
| 1/21/21 | Review | It’s Not All Gravy |
| 1/21/21 | Review | Bibliotica |
Zuleikha arrives in the US from Lahore, Pakistan, by marriage, having trained as a pianist without ever owning a real piano. Now she finally has one-a wedding present from her husband-but nevertheless finds it difficult to get used to her new role of a suburban middle-class housewife who has an abundance of time to play it.
About the author, Suman Mallick
“And through these ages untold, the river did act as the lifeblood of all those things alongside it.
James Wade lives and writes in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Jordan. He has had twenty short stories published in various literary magazines and journals. He is the winner of the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest and a finalist of the Tethered by Letters Short Fiction Contest. All Things Left Wild is his debut novel.
About the book, Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe
About the book, Christmas in Cockleberry Bay 
Feeling alone? Trapped? Lost?
Aaron Hodges was born in 1989 in the small town of Whakatane, New Zealand. He studied for five years at the University of Auckland, completing a Bachelors of Science in Biology and Geography, and a Masters of Environmental Engineering. After working as an environmental consultant for two years, he grew tired of office work and decided to quit his job in 2014 and see the world. One year later, he published his first novel – Stormwielder – while in Guatemala. Since then, he has honed his skills while travelling through parts of SE Asia, India, North and South America, Turkey and Europe, and now has over a dozen works to his name. Today, his adventures continue…
About the book, Christmas at Moonshine Hollow
Angela grew up in Cornwall, England and returns frequently from her new home in Nashville, Tennessee to visit family and friends, drink tea and eat far too many Cornish pasties!
Ellie says…
The Lone Star State doesn’t have to be lonely during Christmas time!
Jodi Thomas is a New York Times bestselling author and fifth-generation Texan who sets many of her award-winning stories in her home state, where her grandmother was born in a covered wagon. A multi-RITA Award winner and member of the prestigious Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, she’s written over 50 novels with millions of copies in print. Her most recent releases are The Little Tea Shop on Main and the first book in her new Honey Creek series, Breakfast at the Honey Creek Café, which is out now.