The Key Ingredient
Written by Susan Wiggs
Narrated by Christina Traister
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs comes a wonderful short story, and companion tale to her unforgettable novel Family Tree
Every great love story has a beginning. Annie Rush’s started at a food cart in a vibrant city park. Annie, then a film student, came across a ruggedly handsome, charismatic chef serving up gourmet street food to an ever-growing clientele lining up for his creations. Together, Annie and Martin Harlow conceived The Key Ingredient, a cooking show featuring Martin as the star while Annie handles production.
As they travel to Annie’s Vermont hometown to film their pilot episode, she realizes that she might want to create more than television magic with Martin. But does he feel the same way? The weather is miserable, their shoot is a disaster, and the maple syrup just isn’t flowing. While Annie tries to cling to her vision for their show, she can’t help but wonder if she could be as unlucky in work as she is in love. Is she always destined to stay behind the scenes?
Just as some recipes only come together at the last minute with the addition of a key ingredient, sometimes a single moment can change everything—turning Annie’s life into a cornucopia of good fortune, the feast of her dreams.
Susan Wiggs
Susan Wiggs is the author of more than fifty novels, including the beloved Lakeshore Chronicles series and the recent New York Times bestsellers The Lost and Found Bookshop, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, and Family Tree. Her award-winning books have been translated into two dozen languages. She lives with her husband on an island in Washington State’s Puget Sound.
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Reviews for The Key Ingredient
31 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Annie Rush has it all, a wonderful husband and career and a great house in Los Angeles, all the things any producer of a TV show would want. Tragedy strikes and her world becomes upside down. Now living in her hometown of Switchback, Vermont she must start her life over again. I love Susan Wiggs books, and Family Tree is her best one yet. I could not put it down and read it in one sitting.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Since I am a nurse and used to work in neurotrauma, I found this book fascinating. The ending was predictable.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annie Rush is the producer of a very successful cooking show starring her husband. They are in love and deliously happy. When she rushes to the set, to tell him that she's just found out she's pregnant, she finds out that their happy marriage was a sham. An accident on the set, puts her in a coma for over a year. When she goes home to Vermont to recover, she finds her life completely changed. Will the town she grew up in, her family and her high school boyfriend be able to help her heal?I have always enjoyed Susan Wiggs books and I thought that this was one of her best. This was a wonderful romance and a fantastic story of recovery from the major changes in life. I highly recommend this novel - it was a great story with real characters that the Reader can really care about.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54.5 stars.
Family Tree by Susan Wiggs is an emotionally compelling, poignant and humorous novel of healing and new beginnings.
Annie Rush has a career and husband she loves but in an instant, life as she knows it is gone. Following a tragic accident, she wakes up from a year long coma with gaps in her memory and a long road of physical and occupational therapy ahead of her. Returning to her family's maple syrup farm in Switchback, Vermont, Annie's recovery is arduous but with her family's support, she slowly adjusts to her new "normal".
While her memories of current events are elusive, Annie has no trouble recalling her first love, Fletcher Wyndham. Despite their love for one another, the timing was never quite right for them and they finally broke up for good when Fletcher married someone else after Annie moved to California. Fletcher is recently divorced and firmly entrenched in Switchback and once they realize their feelings have never waned, he and Annie rekindle their romance. When an unexpected opportunity comes her way, will Annie chose her career? Or will she follow her heart?
Annie fell in love with cooking at her beloved Gran's side and from a young age, she always knew what she wanted out of life. With single-minded determination, she set about making her dreams come true. While she might have wavered briefly after falling in love with Fletcher, they came up with a realistic plan to be together once Annie went off to college. Unfortunately, life threw some unexpected obstacles in their path and their relationship was unable to survive these difficulties.
Annie's career took her in very unanticipated direction and with Fletcher out of the picture, she fell in love with another man. Her marriage to Martin was both a professional and personal collaboration as they worked together on a successful television cooking show. Despite a few ups and downs, Annie is completely satisfied with her life with her husband right up until the day of her accident. Eager to share her good news with Martin, she discovers a devastating secret minutes before the accident that culminated in the year long coma. Now picking up the pieces of her shattered life, Annie revisits both the joy and heartbreak of her past as she comes to terms with her present.
Fletcher is a genuinely kind-hearted man but he is stubborn and puts everyone else's needs ahead of his own. His perseverance pays off and he finds an unexpected career path through misfortune. With neither he nor Annie willing to compromise, they went their separate ways but Fletcher has no regrets about the way his life turned out. But with Annie back in town, he is more than willing to their relationship another chance but Fletcher is not at all prepared when it appears history is going to repeat itself once again.
With chapters that alternate between past and present, Family Tree is a beautifully rendered novel that is poignant yet ultimately uplifting. The characters are multi-faceted with flaws and human frailties that are easy to relate to. The storyline is well-written and engaging with realistic problems and situations for the characters to overcome. Susan Wiggs easily transitions into women's fiction with this heartfelt novel of renewal and love. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Masterful storytelling about a woman who discovers the secret to having it all after losing it all.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annie Rush has it all, a Hollywood career as a producer, a handsome husband.....until it all collapses literally on her head when a scaffolding on the set falls. Her recovery back in Vermont shows her fame and fortune is not all.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5OK novel of cooking show producer who finds her husband with the co-host the day she finds out she is pregnant. A traumatic incident occurs and she returns home to Vermont, to her roots, and finds comfort in her "family tree." Plot kind of formulaeic. I enjoyed the description of the family's maple sugar business, whiskey making, and other food descriptions.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the story of the life of Annie Rush and the amazing recovery she makes from a horrific head injury and her year in a coma. This is such an amazing, interesting story. It’s well worth the readers time to pick up a copy of this book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annie Rush is living the good life, with a husband she loves and her dream job producing their cooking show. When she has a devastating accident immediately after discovering that he is having an affair with his costar, her life is shattered in an instant. Now she must rebuild her life while reconnecting with her past, including her high school boyfriend Fletcher, now a judge. Their timing has always been bad, but now they have another chance. Can Annie overcome her fear of commitment without losing herself and her lifelong dream?A charming, heartwarming romance with very real characters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is definitely Chick Lit which I knew going in. Again, I liked her previous books much better. So, it could be me but just not one of my favorites.