Cheat Day
Lots of food for thought here - ha ha! This book is about …. appetites - and a clever double meaning to ‘cheating.’ Kit is in a rut - married for 7 years to David, working off and on at her sister Melissa and cousin Angelo’s bakery (Sweet Cheeks) in NYC - off when she feels unappreciated - on when she is bored, and she lives in the same house where she grew up. To feel a sense of purpose and control in her life, Kit embarks on fad diets and eating regimes (‘programs’). Her Italian family background and her sometimes bakery job haven’t done her body image any favors. I’m not giving anything away (read the title!) by revealing she starts an affair with hunky hipster Matt who is doing a carpentry project at the bakery. What saves this book from being standard chick lit, or a Harlequin equivalent, is the introspection involved on Kit’s part and the painful conflict she is having with herself. And the family relationships - she and Melissa are a pair! Angelo is the commentator. Sly humor, like the title, also elevates the book to a worthwhile read. - Carrie
This clever and witty debut novel about the unexpected consequences of one woman's attempt to exert control over her life by adhering to a strict wellness routine is "the kind of book you devour in a day or two...sexy and funny, but also very perceptive" (BuzzFeed).
Kit and David were college sweethearts. Now married and in their thirties, they live in Kit's childhood home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. While David has a successful career, jetting off on work trips to exciting destinations, Kit is stuck in a loop. She keeps quitting her job managing her sister's bakery to seek a more ambitious profession, but fear of failure always brings her back to Sweet Cheeks. Kit finds a fraught solace in cycling through fad diets, which David, in his efforts to be supportive, follows along with her. Their latest program is the Radiant Regimen, an intense cleanse, and Kit is optimistic about embarking on a new chapter of healthy eating and self-control.
Hungry in more ways than one, she soon falls into a flirtation with a carpenter named Matt who is building new shelves for the bakery kitchen. Unable to resist their mutual attraction, Kit and Matt soon begin a passionate affair. Kit suppresses her guilt by obsessing over her diet, pushing herself in greater extremes. Told in precise, intimate detail, Cheat Day is "an incredibly likable novel of hungers controlled and liberated, and marriage's gray areas" (Booklist) that explores monogamy versus monotony, deprivation versus indulgence, and limitations of modern wellness.