Hot Dish

by Connie Brockway

Book Overview

Here she is... Years ago, Jenn Lind's family's dynasty crashed, forcing them to move out of their Atlanta penthouse and into a cabin in Fawn Creek, Minnesota. But Jenn saw a way out--she'd win the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 045121983X
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Berkley
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 1.2" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

Astonishingly disappointing

I am a fan of Connie Brockways historical books and although this might be a venture into a new genre it in no way excuses the flatness of this book. Characters who are dull, unlikable or unbelievable (or all three, and that’s our leading lady), a plot that resembles’Who’s on 1st?’, but without the humor. Hard to believe that this is Ms Brockways work - had it been submitted by an unknown, it probably would not have been published. She can do much better than this!

"Hot Dish" is delicious

This is my first Connie Brockway book, but it won't be my last. I truly enjoyed her contemporary romance debut. I was especially thrilled to find a heroine that was old enough to have made mistakes in life and learned from them as a result, and a hero that was imperfect as well. Their story is compelling, funny, and sticks with the reader. I also loved the secondary characters. You can go home again, and Connie Brockway takes us all there in "Hot Dish".

Butter never seemed so funny.

I was excited to read Connie Brockway's foray into contemporary fiction and I was not at all disappointed by "Hot Dish." When I moved to Minnesota in 1998, I visited the state fair with my family and was perplexed to find sculptures of the dairy princesses in the dairy building. What was perplexing was the busts were carved out of huge blocks of butter. I'd never seen anything like it and within two years my curiosity led me to interviewing the sculptress and writing an article about her work. The butter sculptures are my favorite thing about the Minnesota state fair and I couldn't have been more delighted to find Ms. Brockway had prominently featured a butter head sculpture in her story. So prominent, it virtually becomes a secondary character with amusing subplots. Jenn Lind has harbored resentment toward the Fawn Creek, the small town she was forced to live in when her parents lost all their savings in a gambling fiasco. As a teenager, Jenn attempts to use a beauty pageant (with a college scholarship as the prize) as her ticket out of the town. However, things don't go according to her plans. She eventually escapes Fawn Creek and works toward security and success. Twenty years later Jenn must make an obligatory visit to Fawn Creek to preside as Grand Marshall of the town parade in order to secure her position as a television star. I won't give away the plot but settle in with a warm afghan and a mug of hot BUTTERED rum to enjoy this story of a woman's revenge on the small northern town that did her wrong.

So very funny...

I love Connie Brockway's historical romances, and picked this book up expecting it to be her venture into the contemporary romance genre. Well, it is....but not in the way I expected. The romance is kept to a minimum (though still very well done). The focus of the book is Jenn's relationship with her 'hometown,' and Steve's growth into a man who can commit to a woman for a long-term relationship. The 'butter head' (a bust of Jenn carved in a large block of butter when she was in high school) is a recurring theme, and almost every reference to it made me laugh out loud (unfortunately for my seat mate on the plane). Ms. Brockway has such a deft touch in describing the Minnesota small town's inhabitants; I almost felt like I knew them. One of the funniest books I've read in a long time.

I thought it was great!

I'm sick of chick lit, and I thought this was chick lit at first but it isn't. The heroine is older, in her thirties -- it's hilarious but at the same time there's a serious streak here. And, I have to add, one incredible sex scenes. I loved Connie Brockway's historicals but I think I like this book even more!

Hot Dish Hits the Spot!

I used to say that Connie Brockway was one of my favorite historical romance authors. I have to amend that statement now to say that Connie is one of my favorite romance authors, period! Her contemporary debut, Hot Dish, more than lives up to expectations. It is a funny-melancholy and touching tribute to small towns everywhere and what it takes, emotionally and physically, to `come home' to them. I laughed out loud, I was brought to tears, and I empathized with the heroine in her love/hate relationship with Fawn Creek, Minnesota. Not being a native Minnesotan, it took me a while to understand that Minnesota Nice means many things to many people. Living in a village that doesn't even qualify as a town gave me insight to heroine Jenn Lind's struggle to adapt to small-town upper-midwest life. Jenn Hallesby Lind thought she had it all. A brand new TV show that will skyrocket her career to the level of success she's always dreamed of. Name recognition, pots of money, and it doesn't hurt that she's a former beauty queen, even if she doesn't want to talk about that particular chapter in her life. She's shaken the dust (snow) of that small town off her designer shoes (boots) and turned her back on her past. It comes back to haunt her in the shape of a butter head. You know, the butter head, the one that I'd never heard of until I went to the Minnesota State Fair for the first time. Just imagine: your head, forever immortalized in a forty-pound block of butter. Well, at least until they melt it down for some dairy association dinner. Turns out her parents have preserved her butter head for eternity. Yes, forty pounds of twenty-something year old butter... Steve Jaax is at the pinnacle of his career. To think it took carving a butter head and a stint in jail to get him there. He's a successful sculptor who still harbors a great deal of anger toward his first ex-wife (there've been a few since then). That's okay because her rancor equals his. To spite her, he hid something from her and then thought he'd lost if forever. Then word reaches Steve that the butter head that he attributes with turning his career around still exists. Steve wants it. Or at least that's what he wants everyone around him to believe. Jenn and Steve are tapped to be co-grand marshals -WITH the butter head - of Fawn Creek's Sesquicentennial Celebration. As a result, they both return to the small town. Jenn with a measure of resentment and Steve with a sense of wonder. Jenn, Steve, and the assorted characters (oh my heavens, the CHARACTERS) in Fawn Creek will have you smiling, laughing, and very nearly crying at times. And it's just possible that you'll identify with having a dream and going for it only to realize it might not be what you really wanted after all.