BROOKE’S REVIEW
Laura Dave’s Hello, Sunshine is a reminder that you can’t judge a book (or a cookbook) by its cover. Sunshine MacKenzie seems to have it all. She is at the top of her game as a celebrity chef and has a devoted husband. The problem is, however, that her success is built on a lie.

This engaging novel follows Sunshine as she must face humiliation and return home to try and put the pieces back together again. This time she’ll try to build her empire on a sound foundation. Delightfully funny, Dave gives depth to what could otherwise be an ensemble of cliched characters. While somewhat predictable in terms of plot, the growing warmth of the relationships between the characters kept me turning the pages.

PRAISE
“If her Instagram feed is to be believed, Sunshine MacKenzie has it all. But after a hack costs her her career, husband, and apartment, she heads home to figure out whether her sense of self is permanently lost as well. A clever beach bag must-have that points up the follies of FOMO.”
—People

“Funny, fun, and impossible to put down, Hello, Sunshine tells the story of a YouTube-famous chef whose life seems perfect until she gets hacked.”
—Domino.com

“Dave reveals her skill at crafting deeply flawed yet sympathetic characters and avoids easy resolutions in favor of realizations hard won by the heroine. The settings—both the glamorous Manhattan and Hamptons environs and the restaurant-kitchen intrigues—are engaging…Sunshine’s journey to define herself apart from her Instagram filters and YouTube followers is where the novel shines.”
—Publishers Weekly
AUTHOR
Laura Dave is the international bestselling author of Eight Hundred Grapes, The First Husband, The Divorce Party and London is the Best City in America. Her novels have been published in fifteen countries and optioned as major motion pictures. Dave’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, Self, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan. She lives in New York City.

As a final note, I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

take a celebrity chef who has it all. Fame , husband , beautiful apartment . Now have someone take it all away and you have this story .Sunshine Mackenzie has to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and start over. She goes to her hometown where nothing is how she left it. Her sister is hostile towards her and wants nothing to with her. Where does she go from here? As she picks up the pieces of her life and goes toward a new beginning nothing quite turns out like it seems. Which is exactly the reason I liked this book. No clichés. very enjoyable read

i liked this book more than her other one i read - eight hundred grapes? it took awhile to warm up to sunshine, gosh she was unlikable. but i guess that's the point. i eventually liked it and enjoyed watching her grow. i did think the book was a little too short, missing something. i would have liked a bit more. but it was fun and quick and i recommend it.

Sunshine "Sunny" Mackenzie is a star among lifestyle bloggers, and YouTube foodies and chefs. She has several bestselling cookbooks and another one in the works, plus The Food Network has offered her her own program. What could go wrong? Well, everything, actually.
 
Hello, Sunshine, by bestselling author, Laura Dave, is due out in July, 2017, and is and is a fast-paced and captivating account of a young woman rebuilding her life after losing it all -- career, husband, home, and her good name. I couldn't put it down.
 
In today's social media world of curating our lives, the truth is often stretched, if not ignored. Sunny not only ignored the truth, she created a completely false persona. Then she was hacked in a vicious effort to destroy her and everything she has worked for.
 
To "watch" the somewhat surprising direction Sunny takes as she rises from the proverbial ashes and rebuilds her life, is impressive. Many would be unable to resist what she refuses. This is a book devotees of this genre will be unable to put down until they have reached the last page. Readers will love it. Look for me online as The Grumpy Book Reviewer.

I really enjoyed this book and would have easily finished it in a day had life not gotten in the way. This book is about a celebrity chef's humiliating fall from grace and its aftermath. I found this book to be very entertaining and highly addicting! A very fun read.

I liked the concept of HELLO, SUNSHINE very much.. The description was right up my alley. I love Food Network and celebrity chefs; I'm fascinated by YouTuber culture even as I struggle to keep up with it. And who doesn't love a bit of intrigue to spice up internet celebrity landscape? I think with 100 pages more this story could have become one of my favorite contemporary novels. but it's simply 100 pages too short to earn the distinction.

The book begins in situ. We get to know Sunshine Mackenzie, our main character, her world, and her #firstworldproblems from page one (after an annoying digression about Mick Taylor and Mick Jagger that eventually becomes a study in stultifying foreshadowing, but I digress). A marriage in trouble, a workaholic busy working and the compromises that come with that. Then, the bomb dropped: Sunshine had been hacked and somebody was taking it upon themselves to demolish her carefully constructed image and blossoming empire with a heaping helping of Twitter-based mockery as icing on the shambolic cake. I was hooked.

I didn't stay that way.

This book did not concern itself with intrigue for long. In fact, I daresay the intrigue vanished with all of Sunshine's good fortune. When she was exposed for the liar and fraud she was, her world quite literally collapsed, leaving her with almost nothing to show for her years of subterfuge and with almost nowhere to turn. That was the extent of the real drama and this took nearly 50% of the length of the novel. (The book is a short, quick read which only contributes to the impression that it fails to delve into any aspect of story with real depth.) To say pacing was an issue would be an understatement.

From this point, the book takes on the self-revelatory tone of a stereotypical chickLit novel. That isn't a slight, I happen to enjoy chickLit quite a bit, but Hello, Sunshine does this in the least interesting way possible. A return to one's undesirable hometown? Feuding siblings? Hyperintelligent niece? Pretty hot, conveniently nice guy who's into the main character? A lucky professional opportunity the main character does NOT deserve? It was paint by numbers and very little in either the prose or dialogue elevated the story above the level of a trite cliche. Even Sunshine's sudden personal evolution read as hackneyed. And the mystery of Sunshine's saboteur that at first offered an ounce of intrigue only returned long enough to fizzle out in a predictable, unsatisfying conclusion.

This book took an interesting concept--a critique on social media culture and personal authenticity--and sucked all the life out of it with a lack of real tension (Sunshine never really suffers for her duplicity and the hacker isn't really interested in doing permanent damage, for obvious reasons), a lack of in-depth characterization (flat, colorless archetypes abound! with the exception of the eccentric but ultimately pointless Chef Z, nobody amounted to much), and a lackluster conclusion (what was all of it for if Sunshine doesn't really want any of it anymore?).

I wanted to enjoy this book a lot more than I did. Maybe 100 more pages, and a lot more food descriptions, would have helped.

Thank you to NetGalley, Laura Dave, and the publisher for allowing me to read HELLO, SUNSHINE ahead of publication.

DECLINED TO REVIEW. As part of my mission as a full-time book critic, I regularly take on books that are most aptly described (for better or for worse) as "chick lit;" and that's because I think middle-class suburban women have a right to be entertained by smart novels that appeal specifically to them, just like everyone else, and I love having the opportunity to present the best of these kinds of books to that specific audience, just like I love recommending the often overlooked best of science-fiction or MFA lit or crime thrillers to those respective readers. Unfortunately, though, I have to wade through a whole lot more dreck within chick-lit to find the good stuff than I do with any other genre I cover; and <i>Hello, Sunshine</i> turned out to be part of this dreck, a novel I didn't even make to the 15-percent mark of before giving up on with an angry shrug and exasperated eye-roll.

The entire concept itself of the story offended me from page one, which is never a good sign -- already annoying by being about a sorority girl now living in a gentrified Brooklyn, who falls ass-backwards into basic-cable celebrity because of producing a series of YouTube videos about "homey" cooking that turn into a viral sensation, it became even more annoying when learning that she in fact made the whole thing up, in collusion with a producer from the cable channel who wanted an "organically grown hit" and decided to just manufacture one from scratch, essentially two of the worst aspects about late-2010s "Trump America" rolled into one uber-mess of a storyline, which made me not want to even stick around for the redemptive "everything turns out great" ending that was undoubtedly coming.

Now add the abysmal writing style, one which like a lot of chick-lit books substitutes lists of consumer items for actual storytelling skills (attention chick-lit authors: <b>mentioning the stores where your hero bought her furniture is not the same thing as character-building</b>), done with all the nuance and sophistication of a 14-year-old girl writing <i>Twilight</i> fan-fiction; and you can see why I gave up on this book quickly, one of those titles that helps give a bad reputation to the entire genre of novels for middle-class suburban women, a demographic that deserves better than shlock like this. I no longer assign scores to books I didn't finish; but needless to say, I recommend staying far away from this highly unsatisfying novel.

Sunshine currently is living an extremely blessed, and quite public life based on a bunch of lies. She is estranged from her family living her big city dreams. Only someone spills her secrets and her life goes off the rails big time. Of course, then she has no recourse but to lean on her estranged family. Predictable things happen and most is resolved by the end of the book. I remember reading Dave's earlier novel The First Husband and really liking it. I like this one as well although it follows a tried and true formula. Perhaps that is part of the reason I liked it. It is like one of those Hallmark movies albeit a much better written one.

Sunshine Mackenzie is a very popular online culinary star who just signed a deal with the Food Network and has a cookbook in the works when her world implodes on her birthday. Her social media is hacked and the hacker first calls her a fraud and then discloses that Sunshine had an affair with her producer. What can Sunshine say because it is all true? In just a few short hours she loses everything. Her career, her future, and her husband. The only thing she has left to do is go home. Not the fabricated farm she told everybody she was from, but Montauk where she grew up with a very eccentric father and an older sister that catered to his every whim. Now her father is gone and Sunshine does not expect her sister to welcome her with open arms, but that is okay. Because she has a plan for how to get her life back and her plan starts with the hottest restaurant in the Hamptons. Will Sunshine find success with her plan or will she forever be relegated to trash duty for other famous chefs?

Sunshine Mackenzie has a problem. Her own ego. She is a very difficult character to like. The backstory is that Sunshine was working as a bartender when a producer from the Food Network "discovered" her. They fabricated this "farmer's daughter" story together and the rest is history. When things went down Sunshine didn't really apologize to anybody for her lies - she had more of a victim mentality and that is one of the reasons why I struggled to like her. Sunshine and her sister had an interesting relationship, too. Dysfunctional at best, there was so much history between them, but when Sunshine needed her the most she was there for her. Sunshine really had a fondness for her niece, which was sweet. Sunshine was utterly destroyed when she found out who was the hacker, but that is when she started to turn - that is when she finally started to become someone that I could like. The author did an amazing job of transforming Sunshine from beast to beauty. - CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS - In the end, Sunshine got her fresh start, but not in a way that I had expected.


Bottom line - If you are a reader that really loves to see a character go through a reformation of sorts, then Hello Sunshine is definitely for you and Sunshine Mackenzie is a character that you can get behind. Also, a fun read for the foodies out there!

Details:
Hello, Sunshine by Laura Dave
On Facebook
Pages: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 7/11/2017
Buy it Here!

Sunshine Mackenzie has a Youtube cooking channel with millions of viewers, a line of bestselling cookbooks, an adoring handsome husband, and a beautiful new home in a trendy NY neighborhood. She's about to embark on a new adventure with Food Network when she wakes up one morning to an email from "Ain't No Sunshine". The email is threatening to ruin Sunshine and expose her for what she is - a fraud. In this digital age and the world of social media all it really takes to ruin someone in an instant is a few keystrokes. When everyone finds out that Sunshine isn't really who she says she is she loses everything. Every. Thing. Husband, house, job.

Unable to bounce back from being exposed Sunshine returns to her childhood home in Montauk. Hoping to hide out in the house she grew up in and reconnect with her sister, she finds she isn't exactly as welcome as she'd hoped. She and her sister have a strained relationship and it will take awhile before they are able to be around each other acting any more than civil. Sunshine slowly becomes more comfortable in her hometown but still yearns to be back in the kitchen and tries to rebuild her life from the ground up.

This book was was a struggle for me to get through. It took 2 weeks to read and it felt like 2 months. I had a hard time reading it to be honest. I didn't connect with any of the characters and felt zero sympathy for Sunshine and what she was going through. I felt like the author only scratched the surface of the each character and I didn't get to fully know anyone. Each person was unlikable for different reasons. I also hate when I don't have answers to everything. In the end we find out who exposed Sunshine. No explanation as to how that person would have had the opportunity to get the information provided (pictures especially). I didn't find it believable at all.

I really wanted to like this book. It seemed like a light and fun easy read for the Summer. Unfortunately it just didn't do it for me.

This was great. A perfect fluffy read with an oh so summery cover! Poor Sunshine (Sunny) isn't having the best summer, after her perfectly curated cooking persona is outed as fake. Everything is gone as she becomes the hot news of the moment. Like many good heroines, she heads to her childhood home in Montauk, and her semi-estranged sister, Rain. There, things definitely remain interesting, from their strange upbringing to Sunny's eventual realization of what she may really want out of life.

With thanks to the publisher, Simon & Schuster and author, Laura Dave, for the Advanced Reader Copy of the title.

Hello, Sunshine is the story of a modern-day YouTube celebrity chef, poised to break out with a Food Network show, who's world comes crashing down. Beginning on the morning of her 35th birthday, as her social media accounts are hacked and some ominous emails begin to arrive, her past and her present are exposed using the venue upon which her fame was built. Forced out of her life-as-she-knows-it, she returns to her hometown to reunite with her sister as she plans for a comeback designed to right her wrongs while positioning her beyond where she had previously been. But the identity and motive of the hacker/culprit who engineered her downfall isn't what she had assumed, turning her plans and assumption on their ear.

Hello Sunshine is an enjoyable, quick read. I'd highly recommend it to those looking for something a little lighter, but not your typical (or predictable) chick-lit beach read.

It was decent. I was really intrigued by the summary and the downfall via a social media hacker. Without spoiling anything, I didn't see the "who is the hacker" twist coming. But honestly, while unexpected, it was kind of disappointing and didn't seem that realistic. Once you read it, I think you might agree.

The story itself seemed to drag on, and I didn't really feel any empathy for Sunny (was I supposed to?). Even though I vaguely recall her saying something like "this isn't one of those go home to find yourself stories", it kind of is.

The writing itself is hit or miss. Generally, I don't like fiction novels that are talking directly to me. I don't mind first person narration, but I don't like the use of "you" popping up. It also was a bit inconsistent -- some chapters it felt like she was talking directly to me, but then there would be a huge chunk chapters where it was just her narrating. Then it would switch back and it was a little jarring/pulled me out of the story. I think it's more effective to use one strategy or the other.

A lot of the characters also pop in and out, without really adding much depth to the story.

I liked that the chapters were short, because I did find myself saying "oh I'll just read one more" and then reading 3 or 4 more because it wouldn't take much time. To be honest, I think the short chapters are the only reason I was able to finish it...it was a less daunting obstacle. If every chapter was 15-20 pages, it would have seemed like a larger time suck and I wouldn't have bothered. The story isn't that exciting that it kept me wanting more necessarily, but the short chapters made it easier to finish.

The ending was also kind of abrupt. Generally I liked the resolution of the plot (again, trying not to give away any spoilers), but the last chapter was a little disjointed and odd to me.

Sunshine Mackenzie's life appears to be perfect - she has an adoring husband, cookbooks on the bestseller's list, fans who love her, and a contract with Food Network. She wakes up on her birthday to what seems to be another great day, until someone's hacked into her Twitter account. The attacks keep coming and end up ruining everything Sunny had going for her. She loses it all - her fans, her career, her chance with Food Network, her beautiful apartment, and her husband. She's forced to do something she never thought she'd do again - return to her hometown.

I couldn't put this one down. I wanted to know who was behind the hack and how Sunny could possibly redeem herself. Hello, Sunshine covers a lot - lies, betrayal, self-discovery, a little mystery, redemption, and some humor. Great read!! Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for providing me with a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Both funny and authentic in modern day! You really feel for the main character!! Could not put this book down.

A fun read. I enjoyed this book. Loved the relationships between all the characters. Will recommend to all my friends

One of the reasons I enjoy Laura Dave's novels when I tend to not enjoy other women's fiction is the fact that she takes modern-day fads/interests/trends and puts them into perspective. She did this with divorce, with the wine craze, and now with social media. Hello, Sunshine is not just a warning about the dangers of getting caught up in an online persona, though that certainly is one aspect of Sunshine's story. It is also an attempt to reconcile real life with the online version. It is a fine line that she treads very well, keeping her characters authentic and the decisions they make good for them while recognizing they may not be good for others.

Like any good character, Sunshine is by no means perfect, no matter how she presents herself to the public. She focuses on material objects and on appearances to the point of driving readers to boredom. She is self-obsessed to a fault; she very rarely considers how her actions impact others and adopts a tone of self-righteousness when the shit hits the fan. She is spoiled, annoying, and exactly what you would expect from an online "celebrity."

The best part is that while Sunshine does change and grow quite a bit throughout the course of the novel, this is not a fairy tale. She does not wake up one day and recognize where the fault resides for all of her problems. She is no Ebeneezer Scrooge who sees the error of her ways and vows to make everything right. Rather, a good chunk of the novel is watching Sunshine fall as low as she can go, for she continues to make grievous errors and say daft things in situations where she should have learned her lesson after her life implodes. Even after she hits rock bottom, her path to recovery is slow and not finished by the time the novel ends. Sunshine has learned a lot about herself but readers are left with doubts as to whether she has learned enough. The ending is uncertain and a bit contentious; the happily-ever-after ending readers may expect does not exist. In other words, it is a real ending that does more to redeem Sunshine than any other possible close to her story.

As Sunshine is weighing her options and reviewing her life's choices, there is the inevitable evaluation about social media and an online presence as befitting someone who earned her fame and fortune to the Internet. None of what she comes to realize is life-altering or even all that surprising. I think everyone understands how false online personas can be with its staged pictures of how you want to be see or your life to be seen, the makeup that hides the flaws, the backdrops to hide the dirt and clutter. However, what Hello, Sunshine does do is show what happens when we start believing the myth, when we become so focused on capturing the perfect picture or writing the snappiest tweet that we forget what is happening in front of our faces. It is watching life through your phone camera versus enjoying life without it. At no point in time does the story get preachy because honestly there are no good answers. As Sunshine learns, social media is here to stay; it is how the world functions now. The question then revolves around how often we let social media intrude in our lives and how intrusive we let it become. This is what we all have to ask ourselves; Hello, Sunshine provides the perfect building block for the introspection needed to determine the answers.

Hello, Sunshine is an excellent balance between frivolous and serious. Through Sunshine's ruminations on the ruination of her career, Ms. Dave posits some excellent ideas about social media and its seductiveness. She also presents the very real struggle we all have regarding remaining authentic online and present in our everyday lives. There are no easy answers and no fast path to recovery, as Ms. Dave is careful to show. The realism of the story and the questions raised about social media's role in our lives makes this an excellent read, one I devoured in one sitting.

Popular internet cooking sensation Sunshine McKenzie is about to have her own show on Food Network as well as a cookbook deal--when her twitter account is hacked and evidence of her as a fraud is revealed. Interesting premise but a mediocre book with mostly unlikeable characters and a silly series of events.

It is one of those books that catch my attention simply because of the title or the cover, without reading the blurb. Upon peeking on the synopsis, my interest doubled. I knew it would be something fun and light. But I’ve struggled a bit with this one not because it’s a bad story but because Sunny is a character that’s so hard to like. She maybe going through some tough stuff but it’s hard to feel sympathetic towards her. She cheated on her husband just because, she constantly lie and she’d been so selfish for the most part of the story. But as the story progress and I get to know more about Sunny, I get a better understanding of where she’s coming from.She made a lot of mistakes and she paid a big price for it. She was shunned by the culinary world and yet she’s still determined to get back in the business. She was repeatedly shooed away by her sister but she stood her ground and slowly win back her trust. She got an unglamorous job in a restaurant yet she embraced it and did her best to impress her boss. Sunny Mackenzie is a flawed character and there are a few reasons not to like her but there’s also a lot of things you can’t help but admire about her. She’s a strong, independent and determined woman who’ll do everything to achieve her goal. Even if it’s becoming someone that she is not.

It is a good book perfect for someone who is looking for a light read. It is one of those books that will evoke some thoughts to ponder on. In this case, on how real are all the stuff people are posting on social media, on how some are so invested on how they present themselves online to the point of creating a totally new identity.

Hello, Sunshine by Laura Dave is the story of Sunshine Mackenzie. Sunshine is living a dream life as chef with bestselling cookbooks. She is just about to begin filming a television show for the Food Network when she is exposed as a fraud—she never grew up in the country (as she claimed) and she never developed any of her recipes. Suddenly, she has lost everything including her job, home, and husband. She goes home to her estranged family members and tries to put herself back together authentically. I thought this story had so much potential and I was really excited to read it. I expected some great insight into living authentically in a digital age. Overall, the story was a big disappointment. It was very unbelievable at times and the characters did not seem to behave true to who I thought they were. I was very disappointed in this book. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.