5 stars! I absolutely loved this novel and would highly recommend it.

Audrey Landon is such a likeable character; I couldn’t help but root for her. She has gumption and is a survivor. After her husband’s plane was shot down over Dusseldorf leaving her with three young children and a beloved but dilapidated home in danger of being repossessed, she must find a way make ends meet and make the hefty weekly payments to Lady Gwendoline. She does her best to help her children cope with the loss of their father as she grieves her own loss.

As rationing in England continues, Audrey uses her creativity and extraordinary baking skills to make ingredients go further, rations taste a little better and make some extra money selling her baked goods. When the BBC radio opts to have a cooking contest with a significant prize, Audrey becomes a contestant in this fierce competition. The recipes need to be creative to utilize the limited and often off-putting rations. Audrey puts her heart and soul into her cooking as she dreams of better days ahead.

I received an advance copy of this novel; all opinions are my own.

World War II is being over mined for stories topics and recently I’ve said that there has to be something different about a book to make me interested in yet another story set in the war. Hopefully, I’m not being a snob about it but really, there are a lot of them now. One thing I’ve always been interested in more than the names of generals and dates of battles is how real people were managing. What was it like at home? What was it like to cope, to go without, to band together? I am not sure we could do it anymore but at one time people did.

The Kitchen Front spoke to me completely. How do you feed a family with rationing? How creative did a cook have to be? Apparently, very creative! Not one smidgen of anything was wasted. Substitutions and compromises were your only tool. An adult received 4 slices of bacon, no more than 2 pounds of minced meat, a 2 inch cube of cheese, 8 tablespoons of margarine, four tablespoons butter, 3 pints of milk, 1 cup of sugar, 4 tablespoons of jam, 2 ounces of tea, one egg plus 1 packet of dried egg powder and 3 ounces of sweets per week. Not rationed but hard to find were sausages, fish, vegetables, flour and bread. Canned foods could only be purchased with the extra point monthly ration. Obviously creativity was important. A home garden was essential, living in the country gave the added advantage of fish and wild fowl.

With this in mind, the BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front sponsored a contest to encourage creativity in cooking and the four women who entered were given the tasks of creatively preparing three courses. The prize is a spot on the program promoting ration cooking. A real job!

Audrey is a young widow trying to keep her home. Lady Gwendoline is Audrey’s sister but married to money and miserable. She would like to find a way to get out from under his control. Nell is a kitchen maid to Lady Gwendoline’s kitchen. She wants a life. Period. Zelda is a professional chef in a man’s world...and kitchens. She wants to prove a woman can be a professional and respected.

The four women are the four contestants, they spend the spring and summer prepping, planning and cooking their entries into the contest. One of them realizes her dream.

The story is predictable in the characters, each woman representing the many, but they carry the story in their mixing bowls as the most interesting is the actual cooking with the ingredients found and acquired and the substitutions needed to camouflage. How do you make something that would impress the judges, be on the ration list, and something the Minstry of Food was promoting? Well, how about whale?

I loved this and have been waiting for a book that features the challenges of home front.

Inspired by the food rationing hardships of WWII, BBC Radio broadcasts, and the cooking ingenuity of women of the time, this is a wonderful feel good story. Four women, both related and un-related, find their lives merged together for a BBC food contest to utilize ration ingredients for creative recipes in order to win the grand prize; a co-host on "The Kitchen Front" radio broadcast. Two sisters heal their childhood wounds, a kitchen maid finds love, self-confidence and strength and an un-married, pregnant women chef finds an unexpected family. Together they discover that their individual gifts come together to heal the present and provide hope for the future. I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This historical fiction book was a fresh take on WWII England. Four very different women are brought together by a cooking competition using wartime rations. The winner gets a guest hosting gig for the BBC and bragging rights as the best wartime cook. This book is for lovers of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and The Gown by Jennifer Robson with just a splash of Ruth Reichl food memoirs thrown in for good measure (pun intended.) I really liked a different view of WWII women (no spies or concentration camps!) It was a little predictable but not such much as to bother me. I have had Ryan's previous book The Chilbury Ladies' Choir, on my TBR list for a long time and it has just gotten bumped up. 4.25 stars for this historical fiction read.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy. I think this will be universally liked!

The Kitchen Front is a soapy, engrossing book in which the narrative follows a cooking contest held during World War II.  But a few plot choices meant it didn’t quite reach DIK status.

They come from a variety of backgrounds, but they all want one thing – to win a contest that will allow them to become the co-host of a popular BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front, which passes on recipes, tips and tricks for expanding the repertoires of ration-hampered wartime cooks.

First is hardscrabble but judgmental Audrey Landon, mother of three boys, a working class wife whose artist husband became a pilot in the RAF and was killed in action. Even though she has no professional cooking experience, she’s encouraged to enter the contest by her enthusiastic and somewhat shell-shocked children, seeing it as a way to pay off her late husband’s debts and secure their house from the clutches of the tax man.

Her sister, Lady Gwendoline Strickland, is a little snobby, a lot lonely, and completely abused by her cruel husband.  She married into the upper class and is fabulously wealthy but has paid for it with a cold marriage; she has a plan to bring attention to her husband’s position in the Ministry of Agriculture and to put on a proud and charitable good face by winning the contest and working with various social groups.  She’s long resented Audrey for being their mother’s favorite, and thus has no compunction about beating Audrey in the competition, effectively taking money out of her sister’s pocket and food from her nephews’ mouths.  Gwendoline is no chef herself, but she knows how to put on an appearance – and can always get her own cooks to put forward their work as hers.

Or so she thinks.  Mousey, clumsy Nell Brown works as a maid at Fenley Hall, where Gwendoline lives, and her yearning to change her circumstances draws her to the contest. Planning to team with Fenley Hall’s head cook, the grandmotherly Mrs. Quince, Nell learns and grows under her tutelage and begins to dream of a life away from Fenley Hall’s kitchens.

And then there’s sharp-tongued, pregnant but unmarried Zelda Dupont, the head chef at the cantine of the Strickland’s “Rations Efficient” pie factory. Planning to give birth, give up the child and move on with her life, she wants to live in London, and the contest’s fat fees and guaranteed job will do nicely to start her on that path.  After her mother threw her out, she worked in a number of lowly, menial positions, working her way up through the ranks to become a celebrated chef, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to go back.  Zelda thus seeks to beat the competition by any means necessary.

These women – good and ruthless, bad and generous – find their already linked lives intertwining ever more closely as the months go by and they prep for the contest. As time passes, Zelda develops an attachment to Audrey, Nell comes of age and falls in love with a PoW, Audrey and Gwendoline’s relationship begins to mend, and Gwendoline finds self-worth in a new job.  But who will win the BBC job, and what will happen to the women left behind?

I liked all of the different women in this book, though – for different reasons, and in different ways.  Poor Nell definitely attracted the lion’s share of my sympathy, but brittle Zelda and Audrey’s mother love also made me like them.

The way the book delves into Wartime cooking – both the way chefs were limited by their rations and the way modern conveniences were transforming the way old-world recipes were made – is fabulously interesting.  The recipe index includes a receipt for a boiled sheep’s head sandwich roll and a mock-marzipan cake that uses soya flour.  That is ingenious.  The rest of the research Ryan has done into the period is great too.

However, I really didn’t like the way Ryan handles Zelda’s pregnancy with a trite and pat sentiment.  Sometimes sisterhood can’t fix anything -  can’t make a woman a mother if in her soul she doesn’t want to be. In fact, the whole ending is too chirpy and pat and it really needed a bit more grit.  It borders upon syrupy triteness.

The Kitchen Front is an excellent examination of the different lives lived by women on the British home front, and is only marred by a simplistic rah-rah ending that does a disservice to the book at large.  To wrap everything up in simplistic sentiments after the realistic portraits that guide the first half of the book is rather disappointing.  But otherwise, it’s an excellent piece of World War II fiction, and a fine way to spend an afternoon.

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Having enjoyed this author's previous book, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir, I was thrilled to dig into her latest release. For fans of historical fiction, strong women, and the Great British Baking Show, this title will definitely fit the bill. There is a subgenre of historical fiction concerning rationing, foraging, and other food topics during World War 2. One of my favorites is Ruth Reichl's Delicious. This book is another good addition to that genre. The premise is that the BBC show titled The Kitchen Front needs a female host. Of course, a baking contest is held, with the winner becoming the next host of the show. Each contestant has her own backstory and reasons to compete. It is a compelling story from a difficult time in history. It even includes recipes from the time period, adapted for today's ovens. I was thrilled to find out that it is based on true events. All in all, a delightful read.

I am a big fan of cooking competition show and couldn’t wait to dig into this book based on the real 1940’s BBC daily show. Ambrose, a BBC headhunter of sorts is tasked with finding a female co-presenter who can better connect with their audience, sharing cooking tips and recipes. The idea is to hold a cooking challenge and the winner gets the job. How difficult a show like this must have been to pull off during the days of food rationing and use of ‘mock substitutes’.

I loved the author’s ability to create the past and bring to life a lively and diversified cast of characters that included two sisters as different as night and day. I really enjoyed seeing old recipes incorporated.

I learned that contests was a big thing in Britain during WW2, contests keeping the women occupied while men were at war. The Brits clearly have this down to a science. There is nothing I would rather do than hunker down and watch a British cooking/baking show.

Initially, I was extremely excited about this book. From the publisher's description, I believed it would have just about everything I enjoy in a book--World War II, cookery, British country life. Unfortunately, it began and ended there for me. This book falls into a certain category of World War II fiction that I'm not sure I like--it's written to fall within the women's fiction genre. It tends to be relatively unchallenging. The war is kept somewhat at a distance... or maybe it's more than emotions are. That said, as a librarian, I know that many people will enjoy this book, including the focus on daily life during the war and the intersection of women from different socioeconomic classes. So, while this book was not a great read for me, I believe it to be a solid three-star read for its target audience.

Just when I start to think contemporary novelists cannot find another angle on World War II, Jennifer Ryan proves me wrong with her third novel, The Kitchen Front. Ryan’s story about food rationing, cooking, and four women with individual reasons to want to win a BBC Radio cooking contest is sure to charm lovers of historical fiction.

Many people I know have commented on how nice The Great British Baking Show contestants are to each other on today’s TV. Well, some of Ryan’s contestants are nice people, too—in fact, they all have their good sides—but some of them can also be self-centered and ruthless. What will these women be like as the story progresses, and who will win the cooking competition and become co-host of the BBC Kitchen Front radio program, a job that could change any of these women’s lives?

Lady Gwendoline Strickland, mistress of Fenley Hall, wants to show the community, the nation, her older sister, and especially her exacting and difficult husband, Sir Strickland, that she is a winner worthy of him and her position as Lady Strickland. To claim the prize, Gwendoline has no qualms about playing dirty. Her older sister, Mrs. Audrey Landon, is mother the of three boys and a war widow, whose husband was shot down over Dusseldorf, Germany. She runs a home-based cooking business our of her small farm kitchen as a means of scraping by financially. A kind person, she sees the contest as a means of bettering her finances. Zelda Dupont, a London sous-chef who lost her job following the German bombing of the hotel where she worked, has been conscripted and sent to work as cook in a factory supplying food to the British military. She believes winning will land her a job as head chef back in London. The final contestants are the two members of Sir and Lady Strickland’s staff: elderly Mrs. Quince, the head cook, and nineteen-year-old Nell Brown, the kitchen maid. Due to their work responsibilities, they compete as a team, but Mrs. Quince’s goal is helping Nell build the skills and qualifications to escape a life of subservience at Fenley Hall.

The contest consists of three parts, each broadcast over the BBC, one a month for the next three months, to be judged by Ambrose Hart, the current host of the BBC’s Kitchen Front cooking show. Jennifer Ryan scatters the contestants’ recipes throughout the book, giving readers a taste of creative WWII cooking under rationing restrictions.

As the women struggle against difficult odds or connive and scheme to win, the author gradually reveals their backstories, and readers come to understand each woman. Trust me when I say that readers have surprises in store!

Thanks to NetGalley, Ballentine Books/Random House, and Jennifer Ryan for providing an advance reader copy of this delightful novel.

Ms. Ryan's books are an auto-win for me! They provide a look at every day life on the ground during World War II that our history books never focused on (or at least mine didn't) because those recollections were focused on the military aspects and battles on the fronts. Historical fiction is my favorite sub-genre of fiction, and Ms. Ryan's books are like a big cup of tea for me, True comfort reads!

This is yet another WWII story, OR IS IT?! I loved this book. I loved the way that I was able to sit back and watch (read) as 4 women formed a bond that starts with a cooking competition.

All 4 women were well developed characters, even if it did take a minute or two to really get invested in the story. Once I was there, I was not able to put this book down.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing - Ballentine Books for this advanced readers copy. This book is due to release in February 2021.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for this ARC of The Kitchen Front. After reading The Chilbury Ladies Choir and loving it, I was delighted to see that Jennifer Ryan had written another book set in WWII England. Her books are authentic, with characters that are both likable and real. This book was well researched and well written.
The Kitchen Front is based on a BBC radio program of the same name. A daily show featuring recipes and cooking tips, it was popular with housewives trying to stretch their rations.
I have already recommended this book to friends. It's a winner!

Lovers of stories about the British on the home front and their hardships, heartaches, and endurance during WWII will find this to be a very satisfying read. It is a story of cooking in hard times with few ingredients with actual recipes of the era included. Although somewhat predictable, the characters have enough depth to make this an enjoyable read.

4 shining stars for a heartwarming story of tragedy and friendship set in WWII England. This historical fiction book is about a BBC radio program called "The Kitchen Front" and a cooking contest sponsored by this program. The contest is held to promote ways to to create dishes based on rationed foods. There was an actual "Kitchen Front" BBC radio program during WWII.
Four women enter the contest:
Audrey: a wartime widow with 3 children, who is frantically trying to make enough money to feed, clothe and shelter herself and 3 children.
Lady Gwendoline Strickland: She married an older, rich man and wants to become a radio presenter on the BBC program.
Nell: kitchen maid/assistant cook for the Strickland manor.
Zelda: A unmarried, pregnant,out of work London chef. Her lover is a thief and conman.
Gwendoline and Audrey are estranged sisters. Gwendoline is still bitter because of their mother's favoritism towards Audrey. Audrey inherited the family home and Gwendoline was left nothing. She married Sir Strickland because he was rich and had just received a Knighthood, entitling him to be addressed as Sir Strickland. He then encouraged her to call herself Lady Gwendoline.
Nell is assisted by Mrs. Quince, the head cook at Strickland Manor.
This book has all the ingredients of wartime England: Rationing, crooked black markets, boarders being forced upon people by Wartime Billeting Offices and prisoners of war laborers.
How these 4 women interact and compete makes for a pleasant story. My wife read this book before me and also rates it an easy 4 stars. She liked the ending.
Two quotes: "Lady Gwendoline was notorious in the village for two things. The first was roping people into doing things they didn't want to , like helping her at her cooking demonstrations or giving up their spare rooms to evacuees and wartime workers. The second was concluding every conversation she had with some kind of gossipy criticism, such as Mrs. Quince's ever increasing girth or the vicar's drink problem."
Nell on meeting a handsome Italian POW: "And as they knelt, gazing at each other, it was if two magical threads, as fine as spider's silk, had connected them, drawing them together like they were magnetized by the sun and moon above.'
Thanks to Ballantine Books for sending me this eARC through NetGalley.

This might be my favorite Jennifer Ryan book, and I have read them all! I was first drawn to this book because the World War II English homefront is my favorite setting of historical fiction, but I was quickly drawn in by the way the author wrote the four female characters. Even though some of them were initially unlikeable, they all had interesting character development that explained their motivations. I grew to like everyone of them and to see how they became friends despite their differences was heartwarming. I also enjoyed the recipes that were included and the descriptions of how women made do with rationing in this time. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an uplifting story.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan.

I loved The Chilbury Ladies Choir so much that I couldn't wait to get my hands on a new novel by Ryan. I was not disappointed at all. This has just as much heart and love and depth as the last one.

Four women, all from hugely different walks of life enter a cooking contest. But it's a unique contest because the country of England is currently experiencing WWII and food is heavily rationed. So the women have to get creative in order to create delicious food that is readily available to them. They are all desperate to win, but also desperate to beat their contenders, who they might know all a bit too well.

Like I said, a delight to read. Well rounded characters, great surrounding players, a gushing heart of a center. My only real criticism is that it really did get a bit too idealistic and saccharine towards the end. I don't like an ending that is so tidy that it doesn't even seem real, but it didn't negate the enjoyment I felt reading this book.

An entertaining historical novel following four women in WWII-era England. Recipes included!

*Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fascinating read that I really enjoyed. The descriptions of WWII rationing, and the actual recipes, were very interesting, and it made me wonder how I would have coped during those stressful times. 4 stars.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This story follows four women from extremely different backgrounds as they compete in a cooking competition meant to showcase cooking tips and techniques that could turn their WWII wartime rations into tempting meals. They go from being fierce competitors at the beginning to working alongside each other, to helping one another as they all grow in their own ways over the course of the contest.

This book will appeal to a lot of readers - those who like WWII stories, cooks, romantics, all can be steered towards this title. The characters are varied enough that everyone will find someone to relate to. Definitely recommend for those who liked Downton Abbey.

It’s 1942 in a small village just south of London and the BBC hosts a cooking competition with the contestants required to get creative with their rations. These four women contestants move from extreme caution with each other to friendship to family as the competition moves through each course toward a winner. Excellent storytelling and fully realized female characters bring the time period and setting fully to life.