Happy New Year and welcome back to another lovely tour hosted by the folks at Lone Star Literary Life.
Let me preface this review by stating here and now how pleasantly surprised I was by Comfort Foods. Several times while reading, the author spun the usual tropes on their heads. The romance was slowburn perfection, the town felt like a real place, and the banter was superb. Needless to say, I am officially a Kimberly Fish fan and look forward to discovering her other works!
We have a fantastic tour ahead. Don’t forget to peek at the other blogs already featured if you have a chance. And, of course, don’t miss the big giveaway! But for now, grab your preferred comfort drink, and let’s hop on over to Stellas with author Kimberly Fish’s Comfort Foods.
COMFORT FOODS
by Kimberly Fish
Categories: Contemporary / Second Chance Romance
Publisher: Fish Tales Publishing
Date of Publication: October 7, 2020
Number of Pages: 385 pages
Scroll down for the giveaway!
From the award-winning author of Comfort Plans and Comfort Songs comes a story of two rising stars blitzed by social media. Lacy Cavanaugh and single-dad Rudy Delgardo live a hundred miles apart but meet in the worst possible way. Working at a weekly paper and creating social media for area businesses helps Lacy connect with locals who open her mind to a perspective beyond Instagram. In launching a food-and-wine festival to support Comfort’s new event center, she discovers surprising skills bubbling over, much like the food she’s attempting to cook.
Rudy, on the brink of his restaurant’s takeover, struggles to improve time management so he can create a better relationship with his daughter. Distracted by Lacy and her invitation to the festival, he’s tempted by her beauty, wit, and courage, but as a chef, he rarely gets to enjoy life outside the kitchen. Enemies, illness, and exes add unwelcome spice to the dish they’re concocting—one that will teeter with misunderstanding until the very end.
Will Lacy and Rudy embrace their second chances and discover the perfect seasonings of family, resilience, and grace to create a handwritten recipe of love that will stand the test of time?
CLICK TO PURCHASE
5 of 5 Stars
I was excited to dive into Comfort Foods from the moment I read the premise. As a self-prescribed lover of small-town romance (and single-dads who can cook!) this would be my cup of tea, right? I thought so too, until the prologue.
I won’t lie. When I started Comfort Foods, I worried I was about to dive into another iteration of the Hallmark Movie formula variety. The tropes are familiar enough. Wealthy, white, vainglorious Lacy has fallen from fame. Now she’s forced back to her small Texas hometown for a hefty slice of humble pie. But wait, what’s this? The first chapter hops several weeks ahead to reveal a de-glamorized Lacy, writing baby announcements instead of Instagram posts. No longer her own boss, Lacy is working for Frank, the curmudgeonly news editor of Comfort News. Frank instantly reminded me of my grandpa, hard-lines and all, and his rapport with Lacy was purely brilliant banter. After visiting her goat-cheese producing sister Kali, the layers of Lacy’s veneer are further stripped. But it was after her adorkably disastrous meeting with compelling chef, Rudy, that I was officially hooked.
Contrary to first impressions, Comfort Foods is not your run-of-the-mill small-town romance. Fish’s novel has heapings of heart, offers deep and complex character development, and one fabulous slow-burn romance. Let’s be honest, the sizzling romance and food are what will lure most readers in. You’ll stay because of the witty banter, and the relationships Lacy renews with the folks she left behind. Over the course of the narrative, Kimberly Fish manages to take a spoiled heroine and turn her into someone I could relate with and root for. As Lacy is forced to reconnect to people and the world without the boundary of a screen, her past insecurities and failures begin to fade. Lacy’s forced social-media exile and gradual growth were fun to read. Other highlights for me included Rudy’s neglected daughter, Luna, and how their relationship echoed Lacy’s childhood. I loved Lacy’s shift from the person who always runs away, to the person who perseveres.
In Comfort Foods, both Rudy and Lacy are forced to make big decisions that will reshape their futures. Underlying themes of family abound in this novel about coming home to find what you’ve been looking for all along. Packed with compelling dialogue and characters that breathe, Kimberly Fisher’s Comfort Foods is perfect for fans of stories that stay long after you’ve closed the cover.
**I was provided with a copy of Comfort Foods by the publisher and this is my voluntary and honest review.**
MEET KIMBERLY FISH
Author Kimberly Fish resides in Longview, Texas, and enjoys writing contemporary fiction set in the Hill Country. During the seven years she lived in San Antonio, wandering in and around Comfort, Texas, provided endless space for her imagination to develop stories of women discovering their grit. She studied the small Texas town that had seemingly dug its heels into the limestone and refused modern development and thought that was fertile ground for stories about women remodeling their lives. It made a juxtaposition of place and purpose that was hard to ignore. Plus, anything that takes intentional effort has a much higher value than the things that come easily—Comfort personifies this, and the novels remind readers that anything worth having is worth the work.
Comfort Foods is the third full-length novel in the set, Fiction from the Texas Hill Country, and follows behind the award-winning novels Comfort Plans and Comfort Songs. A novella, Emeralds Mark the Spot, is available as a free eBook download to subscribers of the incredibly sporadic newsletter at kimberlyfish.com and is the original story from which all other Comfort novels grew.
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GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!
ONE WINNER
GRANDPRIZE (US only):
Signed copy of COMFORT FOODS +
Ina Garten’s MODERN COMFORT FOOD
Ends Midnight, CST, January 22, 2021
A RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY
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FOR DIRECT LINKS TO EACH POST ON THIS TOUR, UPDATED DAILY.
Or, visit the blogs directly:
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1/12/21 |
Guest Post |
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1/12/21 |
Review |
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1/13/21 |
Excerpt |
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1/14/21 |
Review |
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1/14/21 |
Author Interview |
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1/15/21 |
Review |
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1/16/21 |
Review |
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1/17/21 |
Guest Post |
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1/18/21 |
Review |
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1/18/21 |
Character Interview |
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1/19/21 |
Review |
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1/19/21 |
Guest Post |
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1/20/21 |
Review |
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1/21/21 |
Review |
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1/21/21 |
Review |
blog tour services provided by
Jennifer Silverwood 
Don’t you love when a book blows up your expectations? I have never been disappointed by one of Kimberly’s books and can’t wait to return to Comfort, Texas.
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