A thoughtful novel about grief, change, and moving forward.
Thirteen-year-old Eli and his family moved from their small Minnesota town to New York City because his mom got a new job as a test kitchen chef—but then she died unexpectedly of COVID, so now Eli and his dad are living by themselves in a small apartment in a big, unfamiliar city.
Dad never seems to want to talk about mom, leaving Eli to grapple with his grief and loneliness. While using his mom’s computer for an online computer programming bootcamp, however, Eli finds a stash of cooking videos she made. With the encouragement of a neighbor boy, Matthias (Mat), who is visiting his grandmother for the summer (and whose grandfather also died from COVID), he begins to teach himself the recipes. His cousin Riley, who has a growing online audience for her video game streams, is a supportive presence via video chat, although there’s only so much she can do from back in Minnesota.
Eli hasn’t cooked a lot before, and the recipes are vague in places, so there’s a lot of trial and error (and a little help from Mat’s grandmother), but Eli starts to make progress—only to have his overprotective dad worry that his absorption is keeping him mired in his grief. Eli has to show his dad that cooking is actually helping him, and that the shared food memories might even help his dad as well.
As this unfolds, the relationship between Eli and Mat deepens. They each come out as gay to the other, and it’s clear there’s a crush developing between them. Neither has come out to anyone else yet, although it’s clear that Mat’s grandmother is dropping hints that she knows and is supportive. (At the risk of a slight spoiler, I’ll note that Eli’s dad, when he learns of the boys’ relationship, is effortlessly supportive, too.) It’s refreshing to see a story about two queer tweens in which they have absolutely no angst about being gay, and in which no other characters bully, question, or doubt them. Author Phil Stamper’s slow, gentle building of their relationship is just lovely.
Some pages show us the recipes that Eli has written down from his mom’s videos and elsewhere. Again, his mom was vague about quantities and instructions, so Eli’s notes are, too, and much of the story is driven by Eli’s experimentation to figure all this out. My only complaint is that the chocolate chip cookie recipe that Eli creates for Mat (based on his mom’s starting recipe) has quantities and instructions for everything except for the baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Given that Eli was writing this down after his experimentation, you’d think he would have written down quantities for all the ingredients, based on what had worked—and it would have been nice to have at least one complete recipe for readers to try on their own. That’s a minor point overall, though; while recipes form a key part of the story, this is not a cookbook, and perhaps the lack of specificity may encourage readers to experiment as well.
Eli is a thoughtful character dealing with some big issues, but also learning how to take the initiative for himself when his dad falls short in providing what he needs. His dual interest in coding and cooking is a delightful and rare combination (at least in fiction), and I love that Eli even finds a connection between the two. Stamper has given us a book that delves into grief but never feels bowed down by sadness; that includes a blossoming queer relationship without being “about” the relationship; and that is an ultimately uplifting but not pollyannish tale about resilience and growth. Highly recommended.
Eli and his father are White; Mat and his grandmother are Latine.
