by Marsha Mehran
ages: adult
First sentence: “Mrs. Dervla Quigley, perpetual widow of James Ignatius Quigley, was the self-proclaimed arbiter of all that was decent and holy in the coastal village of Ballinacroagh.”

I had high hopes for this one. I wanted to like it as much as I loved Pomegranate Soup, I wanted to be captivated by the Aminpour sisters again, to be transported by the food and the tastes and the atmosphere of it all. I was happy to jettison it to the top of my reading pile (due to a 14 day checkout rather than the normal 4 week period), and happily began.

I don’t know if it was my mood, or if it was the book, but I just couldn’t get into it. All the elements were there: Marjan was still cooking, and her sisters Bahar and Layla were still as exotic as ever. But there was something off. Bahar was less sad, finding solace in religion — she converts to Catholicism — but in her devotion to a new religion, becomes intolerant, which was disturbing. Marjan finds love, and in so doing, loses the magic that she had in the previous book; she is often scatterbrained and at loose ends trying to make everything work. She is also trying to face her past — she was in love before, and was arrested during the Iranian Revolution — as well as deal with this stranger that washed up on the beach and that their Italian landlord, Estelle, has taken under her wing. And Layla; all she’s interested in is finding a moment to have sex with her boyfriend. She lost her magic, her appeal and became a (uninteresting) teenager. I didn’t like most of the minor characters, either: Dervla was irritating, Father Mahoney was superfluous, and the rest of the town isn’t worth mentioning.

I did, however, like the new characters: Julian, Marjan’s love interest, whom I spent the whole book anxious that he not turn out to be a cad. And the mysterious girl who washes up on the beach; she was fascinating (Is she mermaid? How did she get pregnant? Why was she trying to abort the baby? How did she end up on the beach?) and mysterious, though I have to admit that the mystery got a bit old. It wasn’t until the final third of the book that I even became interested in the story enough to really care. But the final third was interesting and the ending was nice. And the food, while not as wonderful as the first book, was okay.

Maybe it wasn’t my mood, after all.