Book Review: The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster | Shauna Robinson

Family, food, culture, and identity blend in this lovely story about a woman reunites with her estranged family. I absolutely loved Shauna Robinson’s The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster! I laughed, I tcried, and I fell for that messy Townsend family and the barbecue that may bring them back together!

What is The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster about?

One estranged family. One lost recipe. One last barbecue on the line. Mae is about to learn what happens when things go south…

Mae Townsend has always dreamed of connecting with her estranged Black family in the South. She grew up picturing relatives who looked like her, crowded dinner tables, bustling kitchens. And, of course, the Townsend family barbecue, the tradition that kept her late father flying to North Carolina year after year, despite the mysterious rift that always required her to stay behind. 

But as Mae’s wedding draws closer, promising a future of always standing out among her white in-laws, suddenly not knowing the Townsends hits her like a blow. So when news arrives that her paternal grandmother has passed, she decides it’s time to head South. 

What she finds is a family in turmoil, a long-standing grudge intact, a lost mac & cheese recipe causing grief, and a family barbecue on the brink of disaster. Not willing to let her dreams of family slip away, Mae steps up to throw a barbecue everyone will remember.

For better or for worse.

What did I think?

Mae’s story made me think of the best parts of coming-of-age novels, where the main character becomes a whole person before our eyes. Only in this case, Mae is a grown adult who is ready to get married. I wouldn’t say Mae is immature at all, but she is missing a piece of her story—a big one. The book isn’t only about Mae’s journey to connect with her estranged family, but also how that family found their way back together.

Raised by interracial parents but estranged from her father’s southern, black family, Mae is missing something she can’t put into words. She pictures big, messy, boisterous family dinners and bustling kitchens. She pictures people who look like her and provide her a level of comfort she doesn’t quite have in the white, Californian community she was raised in.

Mae becomes more conscious of the microaggressions and racial incidents that she had grown accustomed to from her mother’s side of the family. She feels an incompleteness, particularly when it comes to her father’s family and her ties to the black community. Mae’s father used to travel back to North Carolina for a family barbecue—one he never let Mae tag along for. Mae is on the cusp of getting married to a white man named Connor, and it’s bringing up the gap she feels when she thinks about family. When her paternal grandmother passes away, Mae decides to finally go to meet her father’s family in North Carolina.

It turns out that popping into the funeral of the family who you’ve long been stranged from isn’t as smooth as you’d expect. The warmth and love that she pictured is in a state of turmoil, though. Some won’t let go of their grudges, some are holding secrets, and a long-lost macaroni and cheese recipe threatens to be the final straw tearing their family barbecue apart. Mae won’t let her family slip away from her, and she sets out to plan the best 4^th of July barbecue the Townsends have ever seen.

I enjoyed this book immensely, both the parts I could relate to from personal experience and the parts that I was learning about through Mae’s experience. The emphasis on food sounds cliched, but there is a reason food is central to many of the ways we connect as people. It is love, comfort, and part of how we gather together. Food is in some ways a great social connector—it can teach us about family, culture, tradition, and expressions of love.

A sense of community and a sense of belonging are core to Mae’s journey in the novel, and what she is most seeking when she goes to reconnect with her father’s family. There is also a theme around the importance of having a safe space, however we define that.

Heartfelt!

Thank you to Sourcebooks for my copy. Opinions are my own.