Ironically for the title of the book, I really wish more time had been spent on the cooking element.

'Dinner for One' is a memoir about Dacres experience with a whirlwind relationship and subsequent marriage to a Frenchman, leading her to move to Paris and experience a significant culture clash there. When the marriage falls apart, the city helps her to heal - and improve her French.

It's hard to review a memoir because this is somebody's life. But, my main gripe is that the title of the book is a tad misleading. 3/4 of it is not about cooking at all - there are occasional caveats about eating and her obsession with l'aperitif - but about the (admittedly) bad decisions she made in her relationship. There were moments where she said things I couldn't be sure were jokes or if they were serious. In fact, there were moments where I thought 'I can see red flags all over the damn place, you two should not be together.'

The part of the book I loved - the other quarter - were those explorations of food and cooking in the city. Visiting the various shops, discovering the devotion to which the French treat the culinary arts. But it was all over so quickly. Because the book hadn't been about the healing process. It had just laid out the whole story - and then spent a few chapters talking about what came after. I wanted more of that part, more of the stories, more of the food! If it had been marketed as a book about relationships, it would've made far more sense. Not a bad book, but missold.