A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for my review.  All thoughts expressed below are my own.

My Rating: 4/5

Goodreads Rating: 

Goodreads Synopsis: A Place at the Table tells the story of three richly nuanced characters whose paths converge in a chic Manhattan cafe:  Bobby, a gay Southern boy who has been ostracized by his family; Amelia, a wealthy Connecticut woman whose life is upended when a family secret finally comes to light; and Alice, an African-American chef whose heritage is the basis of a famous cookbook but whose past is a mystery to those who know her.

As it sweeps from a freed-slave settlement in 1920s North Carolina to the Manhattan of the deadly AIDs eidemic of the 1980s to todays wealthy suburbs, A Place at the Table celebrates the healing power of food and the magic of New York as three seekers come together in the understanding that when you embrace the thing that makes you different, you become whole.

My Review: I really enjoyed this story.  I liked how the characters lives weaved with each other.  This story was a little different than I expected, it touched on some heavy issues that we encounter in society today, but I felt that Susan Rebecca White did a good job of writing those issues in.  I also felt that she did justice to the two main locations in the story.  My only issue with the story is that we followed Bobby's life so much in the first half, and I was very interested to read more about him and his story, but when another of the characters was introduced, I felt Bobby's story drop and it felt incomplete.  Other than that, I did thoroughly enjoy this story.  I can't wait to read some more stories by Susan Rebecca White.