Recipe for Disaster

Seventeen-year-old Clementine Gaskins’s life is all planned out. Only, she didn’t do any of its planning. 

The next step in the recipe that Cleo’s parents have had her following since she was able to hold a spatula: attend the Atlanta Culinary Institute so that, after graduating, she can run the family restaurant. But as Cleo approaches campus, she second-guesses all their carefully laid plans.

In a panic, she drives instead to her nana’s vacant beach house. After an embarrassing run-in with the cute local boy Luca (when she may or may not have ripped her pants), Cleo becomes inspired to create her own “recipe,” a.k.a. a plan to get her life back on course.

As with every recipe test, there’s always room for improvement: heavy on the laughter, a pinch of courage when she can spare it, and heaps of whatever makes her tingle when Luca and his dimple are near. But Cleo has set too many pots to boil, and every secret she’s been keeping—from her college, her family, herself—causes her life to go up in flames, and not in a way that has been deliciously flambéed.

Only Cleo can decide what she wants her life to be. She just has to be brave enough to reach for it.