No Place I’d Rather Be by Cathy Lamb

Having collected family history, snippets and recipes then put them onto a CD to disperse to family I was eager to read this story. This book does tell the history of a long line of brave women who shared down through the years one book in which they preserved not only recipes but so much more. Tucked away and found decades later then cooked from by those remaining in the current era the recipes brought back missing memories and tastes of the past for the woman who hid it away so many years before. As the recipes were made and talked about so were the people from the past and their histories.

Olivia returns home to Montana with two young once abused foster daughters looking for security that she turned her back on two years before. She still loves her husband but feels that they have a problem too big to deal with - I have to say I felt she was a bit immature in her behavior and couldn’t really understand why perfect Jace waited for her so long. Olivia’s grandmother who tucked the cookbook away with other items was strong, serene and a healer with much pain in her past. Olivia’s mother was a physician that was outspoken and blunt (where did her personality come from?) and Olivia’s sister was almost a caricature with superhuman abilities in her overlarge frame and outspoken voice. Kyle with Asperger’s was a wonderful young man that I wished the best for. The family interactions were interesting, the little girls precious, the romance drawn out then it seems time had to be made up for and I am not sure why but at times I felt the book was a bit preachy or teachy…not much…just sometimes. Anyway, this book had many topics discussed within it: abuse, war, racism, bigotry, bullying, natural healing, mental illness, family, loss, cooking, misogyny, harassment…and more. All in all it is a feel good book with a happy ending for all but.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the ARC – this is my honest review.

3-4 Stars

I laughed and cried through this tale of loss, war, abuse and family! A heirloom tattered singed cookbook, the center of the Martindale history where Martindale cake therapy brings healing! The cookbook with the pink ribbon is loaded with love, wisdom and history! Read this incredible story! I received an advance copy from Great Thoughts Ninjas. All opinions are my own..

Emotions run high in this wonderful story. Family, friendship, secrets, truths, and second chances are all front and center in this one. Events of the past will definitely shape the future of all the characters.

Olivia Martindale left Montana and her husband two years ago. It seemed the best thing to do at the time. Now she's back for a time to help her almost adopted daughter. While home she comes upon a family recipe book. The book will become much more than family recipes and keepsakes as Olivia decides to make each of the recipes. Going through the book and recipes proves to be a healing power for Olivia.

A great story that will take you on a memorable journey. I highly recommend this one.

I just finished this book and all I can say is WOW - what a fantastic book. As always, Cathy Lamb has presented her readers with a complex book about family and love and acceptance. It was a book that caused laugh out loud moments as well as tears. I was so involved in this book that I cancelled lunch plans today so that I could finish it.

Olivia returns to her family in Montana after a 2 year absence with two little girls that she hopes to adopt. The girls had lived a neglected life with their drug-addicted parents who were now in jail and Olivia wants to protect them. Olivia's family is a loving but eclectic group of people - her sister (I loved her sister and their relationship), Kyle, her sister's Asperger's son, her mom, the doctor and her grandma the herbal healer and her husband. Olivia is a chef and her family believes that the family who cooks together, stays happy. (Trust me, don't read this book hungry!). When Olivia finds an old recipe book in the attic, it causes her grandmother to start talking about her past to her family, something that she has never shared with them.

Overall, this is a story about a strong family of women (with a few men thrown in) who cook together and love each other no matter their faults and support each other. The author does a wonderful job of bringing in other subjects - bullying at school, sexual abuse in the work place and autism to name a few. The readers learns to know and to love the women in this book and to laugh and cry and cheer with them at their successes. I hated to leave them all behind in Montana at the end of the novel.

I received an advance review copy of this book from the Great Thought's Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own. Thanks to netgalley for a copy of this book.

No Place I'd Rather Be - and no book I'd rather be reading. Cathy Lamb has managed to enthral me again with her far reaching story of strong women who are loads of fun. Lamb has a strong, unique voice in all her writing, as Kristy Woodson Harvey says in her review "If I was on a deserted island and stumbled across a blank copy of No Place I'd Rather Be with no title, no author page and no distinguishing marks, I would still know it was Cathy Lamb's. Her voice is totally unique, pitch perfect and utterly charming." I couldn't agree more. And I'd know it too.

This is a mix of historical and contemporary fiction, both heart warming and heart breaking. Gisela is the great grandmother, a German Jew who was uprooted when the Nazi's went to work. She lost everyone, but did find a strong Montana man in Oliver Martindale an American airforce officer and a doctor. Together they set up a practice and have one child Mary Beth, who in turn becomes a doctor. She did not find a strong Montana man, her husband abandoned her and left Mary Beth and her daughters Olivia and Chloe. But like Gisela these women have spines of concrete. I so loved them all.

Olivia has left her wonderful husband Jace for some reason we don't know, and it takes quite awhile for that mystery to unfold. I kind of guessed it, but had to wait and see. Jace is amazing and it did break her heart to do it. Olivia has taken on the guardianship of two young girls who need her and she makes a wonderful mother. When she has to return to her home town relationships change, stories unfold and we are introduced to a family I'd love to meet. Chloe, Olivia's sister has a son - Kyle who has Aspergers. I loved his part in the story and how he was involved, his whole journey.

If you are a food lover then this book would definitely appeal from that angle. Much to Mary Beth's disappointment Olivia did not follow her into the medical field, but rather is a fantastic cook. And the discovery of a family cookbook in the attic is a thread that runs through the book, linking past family to the present.

This book has all I could ask for in a book - some history, some humor, some romance, some mystery and suspense, and a huge focus on family and what brings love and happiness. The characters are smart, flawed and totally loveable. Its a big, warmhearted, compassionate feast of a book. I'll be buying myself a paperback version to reread in future.

Female chef (Olivia) hopes to adopt two girls (Lucy and Stephi) born to drug-addicted parents. Will the court system allow it?

This story was the perfect mix of laugh out loud humor and deeply-felt emotions, and so many elements struck a personal chord with me (red front door, red geraniums, adoption, handwritten recipes, etc). For those that follow my reviews, you know that I am very stingy with my 5 star ratings. While this one did not make me bawl (as most of my 5 star reads do ha), it did bring tears to my eyes several times and earned a 5 star rating for its perfect blend of humor and emotion. I also love when a story alternates between the past and the present and this one was no exception.

The past focuses on their Jewish relatives who fled the Nazis in both Odessa, Ukraine and Munich, Germany before arriving in London, England and finally settling in Montana where the present day story takes place. Grandmother Gisela has spent most of her life in Montana hiding from her grief. But, after her granddaughter, Olivia, finds an heirloom cookbook/scrapbook in the attic, Gisela is finally ready to share her story with her family.

The present day story is a fabulous mix of eccentric, strong, hilarious, feminist, lovable, mostly female characters. After living out of state, Olivia returns home with two girls in tow with the hopes of adopting them after their drug-addicted parents were sentenced to time in jail. There, she receives love and support from her grandmother, Gisela, her mother, Mary Beth, and her sister, Chloe. The nearly all-female cast is joined by her quirky nephew, Kyle, who is a talented artist and has Asperger's. I absolutely loved Kyle and how the story played out for him.

I very much enjoyed the adult and simple, realistic kid humor sprinkled throughout the story. One of my favorite scenes was the cooking video Olivia made with her straight-talking mom. Yikes haha. I also loved that the heirloom cookbook and food played such a huge role in this book and how the recipes were all crafted with love.

I would highly recommend this one for fans of: author Kristin Hannah, author Elin Hilderbrand, Orphan Train, The Orphans of Race Point, and The Language of Flowers.

Last but certainly not least, this was my first time reading anything by author Cathy Lamb, and I am thrilled to add her to my list of all-time favorite authors! Can't wait to read more.

Thank you so very much to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Olivia separates from the love of her life, Jace, and leaves their marriage, her job, and all the memories in the dust. Well, maybe not the memories. She attempts to start a new life, and a new job, and makes friends with one of her neighbors and her 2 granddaughters. When the grandmother asks Olivia to step in and be their mom if something were to happen, Olivia jumped at the chance. Their mother was incarcerated because of a robbery and between that and the drug use and negligence charges it didn't look possible that Devlin would ever be able to get the girls back. When Devlin starts calling Olivia from prison and threatening her, and Olivia has a long-coming blow-up at her current boss, she packs up the girls and all their stuff and heads back to hometown. This book will have you cheering, laughing and unable to put it down. I highly recommend this book.

This book is so great! Fantastic family relationships, really interesting characters, humor, tears, joy, and a plot line sure to hold anyone's attention. I hadn't read anything by this author before, but now I'm adding all of her books to my tbr list.

**Spoiler Alert**
How did I not know about Cathy Lamb? Her book is absolutely yummy! It’s chock full of all the necessary ingredients for a delicious read. Really! I’m talking about love, laughter, secrets, drama, and high five moments.
Tired of her overbearing jerk of a boss and constant threatening calls from Stephi & Lucy’s mother, Chef Olivia packs up her car with her two foster kids in tow and heads home to Montana. She has three generations of strong women awaiting her return: Chloe, her fiercely loyal and outspoken sister who longs to date again all the while raising her autistic son, their doctor mom who longs to have another generation of physicians in the family and her sweet and sometimes distant grandmother, Gisela who shares Olivia’s love for baking and will talk about anything except the past.

As Olivia temporarily settles back into the community living in her grandparent’s house, she accidentally discovers a box in the attic. The contents reveal grandmother’s secrets. When approached about the box, Gisela finally starts to share her story.

While learning about her grandmother’s past, Olivia must begin to examine her own. When she comes home to Montana, everything she walked away from is still there, including Jace. There is so much more to that story.

I received an advance review copy of this book from Great Thoughts Ninjas. All opinions are my own.

**I received an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for a truthful review.**
Another superb book from author Cathy Lamb! You will laugh; you will cry. The characters are artfully crafted, each with their own unique personality and flavor. Although humorous and quirky at times, this book also flashes back to a grandmother's haunted past due to the the mortifying occurrences of the Nazi invasion of Germany and bombing of England. The past and present are wonderfully blended and will keep the reader intrigued. This book will appeal to mothers, grandmothers, daughters, those who cheer on a son or daughter with Asperger's Syndrome, those hopeful to adopt, foster parents, and anyone who loves a flat-out good read. I hope we will see more from Cathy Lamb in the future!

What an incredible journey Cathy Lamb just took me on!!!

No Place I'd Rather Be is a brilliantly written novel about family, both the kind we are born into and the one we create for ourselves. Surrounded by her grandmother, mother, sister (and nephew) and the daughters she's hoping to adopt, Olivia Martindale discovers secrets from her families past, which in turn helps to unlock which direction her own personal destination should be.

Throughout this novel Cathy Lamb does an great job of giving us the background of all the different generations of women in Martindale family. It's amazing the domino effect that their past has on their present day life. I thought the storyline was well thought out and the pacing was perfect. Several twists and turns truly shocked me--loved that!! No Place I'd Rather Be combines the women's fiction, historical fiction and the romance genres beautifully. From the synopsis alone, I figured this would be an emotional read, but I had no idea just how much my heartstrings would be tugged (on so many levels)!! No Place I'd Rather Be is a solid and complete 5 star novel! Looking forward to reading more Cathy Lamb novels in the future!!

I so enjoyed this book!!

I have to say first off, I am a huge fan of Cathy Lamb & this book did not disappoint.
It was full of life, great family moments & also some sadness, current & in the past.

The book revolves around an old family cookbook, which is more than just recipes, it is a multi generational family history & we see how the book survived through many horrific historic times.

We meet Olivia, current time, daughter & granddaughter of 2 amazing women. Olivia has her own life struggles & needs to be with her family to help her get through some tough times. The family tends to cook together to deal with sadness & happy times too.

Olivia stumbles upon a box in the attic & in it is the cookbook. Over time within the book, we hear stories from the actual moments in history, as if they are happening in current time. These parts of the book were very emotional & raw at times. But we saw how each generation of this family moved on until we reached Olivia's grandmother. It was written so beautifully!

Not all was sad, there was plenty of humor & lighthearted moments & some romance too!!

I received an advance review copy of this book from the Great Thought's Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own & thank you to Net Galley for providing this advance copy!

This was my first time reading anything by Cathy Lamb. I've heard mixed reviews from others, but I was looking forward to this title. I just couldn't get into it. The story seemed disjointed and the characters were uninteresting.

From the descriptions of this book I thought it would be a book about cooking but it is so much more than that. The story of Gisela's family was masterfully interwoven with the story taking place in "present day". I loved how Olivia's uncovering of Grandma Gisela's hidden box allowed Gisela to share her history with her Montana family.
This book was fun and at the same time heartbreaking. I was so frustrated with Olivia & how she would not warm up to Jace and had to keep reading to find out why they couldn't be together. I loved Martindale Cake Therapy & Chloe's weird cooking tick. I loved Kyle, Stephi & Lucy too. All of the main characters were wonderful.
There was a little bit of everything in this book: mental illness, autism, child abuse aftermath, family, love & reconciliation.
All in all a beautiful story!

I received an advance review copy of this book from the Great Thought's Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own.

There is no author I love to read more when I'm on vacation than Cathy Lamb. I'm guaranteed a great story with strong female characters overcoming adversity with a very hunky man in the picture. They don't read like romance novels though they always have a little steam and built up lusty feelings. They are just enjoyable - will bring you tears and laughter on the same page, and just let you fall into a word wonderland.

In NO PLACE I'D RATHER BE, Cathy Lamb brings us a whole family of strong women from Montana. This story centers around a multi-generational cookbook that serves as a scrapbook of survival for Gisela Martindale.
The story is told primarily from Olivia Martindale's voice and has italicized sections from other women in the family telling why they selected certain recipes and what happened to them while they were writing them down over the years. I loved this unique take and how alive the characters in this novel are. The children pull at your heart strings. My favorite character is actually Kyle and his journey. I love how Lamb brings so much humor to this novel to balance out the sadness. This book is about coming home and finding out what home really means - it's all about family!

I received an ARC of this novel from Great Thoughts' Great Readers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first book I have read by Cathy Lamb. I really wanted to like this book. I think the premise of the book is actually very good. There was too much going on to feel realistic. , Olivia is trying to adopt two girls whose mother was in jail and their custodial grandmother was hit by a bus, a grandmother with a hidden tragic past, a mother who is upset her daughters aren't doctors, a sister who is a hero helicopter-flying widow with a son who has Asperger's and is bullied, and she has a boss who is a sexist sleaze ball who owns a dive. All in all there was just too much quirkiness to handle.

No Place I'd Rather Be is about family, love, lose, and cooking. The descriptive, lovable characters are unique and develop into strong, independent women. Cathy Lamb pulls me in every time.

Olivia Martindale starts off as a shattered women as she escapes her life in Montana to try to put herself back together. Olivia ends up bonding with an older women and her grandchildren. She returns to Montana with the two children to figure out how to keep them safe while waiting to hopefully adopt them. A families' cookbook was accidentally found by Olivia. It is full of recipes, drawings, and mementos from generations in many languages and has been passed down since the late 1800's The special cookbook unravels family secrets that no one knew about except their grandmother.

I laughed, cheered, beamed, and cried for and with the characters throughout the entire book. This is my favorite Cathy Lamb book to date. I received an advance review copy of this book from Netgalley and the Great Thought's Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own.

What an amazing book! I laughed, I cried, and I cheered all with my finger in the air! This book is a story of family, love, and secrets in the past. A family heirloom cookbook passed down from many generations is a major part of the story and tells it's very own story. The characters oh the characters are just perfect and I wish I lived in Montana with them. The descriptions in the book are just wonderful. I see the cabin with the many windows, the red door, and the red geraniums planted. I loved the strong women in this book each having their own life issues to conquer. I truly loved this story and I didn't want to leave Montana. This book is a book that will stay in your heart forever. Thank you so very much to NetGalley and Kensington Books for providing me an ARC in return for an honest review.

No Place I'd Rather Be is a poignant, heart-warming story about families, secrets, and home. The author, Cathy Lamb has an extraordinary talent for weaving together past and present, humor and sadness. In this book I found myself laughing out loud on one page, and shedding tears on the next. The stories of several generations of brave, amazing women are bound by a cookbook; a family treasure that is filled with more than recipes; singed by fire, stained by blood and tears, bearing witness to a family's journey from Odessa to Munich to London and, finally, to Montana. The characters in this book are unique and wonderful, the love between them evident, and I fell in love with them all.
I received an advance review copy of this book from the Great Thought's Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own.

I got to read an early copy through NetGalley. I hadn't read this author before and had heard good things.

Olivia runs back to her hometown in Montana when a scary situation causes her to question whether she will be able to adopt her foster children or whether their negligent mother will be given custody.

This isn't the first time she's run away from her life. Two years ago, she ran away from her husband.

When we meet Jace, her ex, we learn very quickly that he's basically perfect and she's the one that left him because of some impasse in their relationship.
She struggles with seeing him again.

While at her family home, she uncovers an old box containing her grandmother's possessions. Her grandmother is alive but she has kept her past an absolute secret from her family.

It doesn't take much for the reader or her family to guess why the secrecy. After all, her grandmother is Jewish, she lived in Germany and she won't talk about her family.

The secrets in the story aren't hard to figure out, either Olivia's or her grandmother's. But I don't think that's what it's about anyway. It's not a mystery for us to figure out, it's about showing the strength and resolution this family has to keep going no matter what life deals them.

My favorite character was nephew Kyle. He will warm your heart. Sometimes Olivia's sister Chloe was over the top but I saw her as a Rebel Wilson type. I think seeing her that way made me picture her as a real character.

Definitely sad at times. I enjoy the times the family gathered around the grandmother's old cookbook and made old family recipes best. I'd have taken a bit more of the light and airy part.