Breakfast in Bed

Rochelle Alers

Aug 2017 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Susan Spain

About this audiobook

Bestselling author Rochelle Alers welcomes readers back to romantic New Orleans in her warm and sexy series about four very different women embarking on a new adventure. Sometimes you go in search of a new beginning. Other times, it finds you. Tonya Martin enjoys her job as a professional chef for a Wall Street bank, her East Harlem walk-up, and the freedom to live and love by her own rules-right up until the day she finds herself suddenly downsized. But a spontaneous trip to New Orleans opens up a new opportunity. With time on her hands and her daughter soon graduating college, Tonya has the chance to reach for her own long-cherished dream-opening a restaurant on her friend Hannah's beautiful Garden District estate. While Hannah and her new husband work on transforming the DuPont House into a luxury inn, Tonya explores local cuisine, taking an apprentice role at famed restaurant Chez Toussaints. Gage Toussaint's mix of Creole, Cajun, and African ancestry is deeply attractive, and the sexy chef clearly wants their friendship to become much more. Drawn to him yet hesitant given their previous unhappy marriages, Tonya wonders if it's too late to leap into love again. Could Gage be just the ingredient she needs to make this delicious new life complete?

Ratings and reviews

AudioBook Review Stars: Overall 4 Narration 3 Story 4 The opportunity to dive into a story that featured both a city I adore {New Orleans} and an older, more-seasoned and experienced couple were bit draws for this title. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the redefined / reconnected friendships here as well, with a cast of characters that have seen life, found happiness and disappointment, and are ready for new starts. Tonya loved her New York life: she remade herself after her divorce, and working as a private chef, her daughter near graduation, and in control of her own space is almost everything she dreamed of. Until things went sour –and left her at loose ends without a job or intriguing prospects: she doesn’t have the resources to start her own ‘dream’ – a restaurant, and she’s not all that interested in placing herself in a situation where her livelihood depends on anyone else’s choice. With her friend Hannah’s new life in the Garden District of New Orleans, why not chase her dream of a restaurant with the Inn – one that she could manage and run, with plenty of determination and elbow grease? Gage Toussaint has a hot restaurant in the city, Chez Toussaints, where a mix of Cajun, Creole and African tastes spice up the menu in ways that seem only plausible in New Orleans. Affected by his own disastrous end to a marriage, Gage spends his energies on the food he loves to create and the music that permeates every street of the city. He’s Hannah’s cousin-in-law, and happy to make the introduction when Tonya arrives in the city – anxious to explore the city, its cuisine and influences, and get a sense of what direction she wants her restaurant to take. Offering friendship and an apprenticeship at the restaurant, Gage becomes a ‘guide’ to Tonya’s immersion in the city: this isn’t an insta-romance, but the seeds are planted, waiting for them to feel safe together. It makes the other moments of their story grab relevance and start mouths watering as food, scents, sights and sounds of the city are woven together in a tapestry that present a picture of the city that is easy to visualize and want to dive into. A few moments where phrases were too-often used to describe food – not everything needs be Cajun or Creole in New Orleans, and I hoped for more of a ‘feel’ of New Orleans in the narration, but the story, while with tiny hiccups, was engaging and a perfect escape read –full of the heart and hope that is so necessary in stories that are giving the characters a second chance: at life, at love and to reach for their dreams. Narration for this book was provided by Susan Spain, and while her presentation was clear, characters were presented with appropriate emotional weight to their personalities, and there were no great pauses or missteps to take the listener out of the moment, I wanted a bit more. More depth and distinction for Gage’s voice, accent that felt New Orleans and not ‘standard American’ and as an added bonus the sense of the diversity in the cast to appear, in small ways to distinguish the characters with the flavor of the Cajun and Creole roots contained within. I received an AudioBook copy of the title from Recorded Books for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.