3.75 stars

The most important thing to know about this book is that you WILL crave macaroni and cheese. There's no way around it. I'm vegan, and it was truly all I could think about (and I still have residual cravings thinking back on it now).

Mae, one of the titular Townsends, has some family drama brewing, and this has been compounded by a wedding, a couple of deaths, a lost recipe, and many past struggles. Though Mae has pushed down a lot of those aforementioned challenges, she's now set on two tasks: (1) cracking the code on her deceased grandmother's secret mac and cheese recipe and (2) starting to tackle some of those complicated relationships and hurts.

While I found the pacing a bit slower than I'd like at times, there is a lot to go on here. Mae's experiences with racism, including within her own family, are expressed in a meaningful and realistic way, and her isolation in those circumstances is particularly wrenching. Additionally, Mae's deep desire to connect and her not always effective methods for doing so offer, well, a lot of food for thought, one might say.

It's a pleasure to get to know Mae and to root for her success. This is my second book by this author, and I'm becoming a bigger fan with each read.