Book Review: Hungry for Happiness

Hungry for HappinessHungry for Happiness by James Villas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hungry for Happiness is the story of Loretta Crawford, a 36-year old woman who's husband leaves her for another, thinner woman. Loretta decides to change her life and starts by having lap band surgery. Before her surgery she weighed 280 pounds (and was only 5'4"). Even though Loretta is losing weight, she still loves to cook and word gets around that she's one of the best cooks around. Soon she has her own catering business. Also, as she loses more and more weight, she catches the eye of more and more men.

I noticed some reviewers didn't like Loretta's Texas dialect and thought it was over the top. I'm not Texan so I can't say for sure if it was realistic but even if it wasn't I thought it was charming and funny.

I think the overall message of this book was that there are no simple solutions to life's problems. Loretta thinks that weight loss surgery and losing weight will automatically make her happy but she doesn't realize that she has underlying issues that caused her to gain the weight in the first place. However, I don't feel like Loretta ever really understood that and I would have expected her to eventually have some sort of revelation. This book started out with a bang and ended with kind of a whimper.

Some of Loretta's recipes are in the back of the book. A couple I probably won't try because they are just too over the top fattening. For instance, the bread crumbs in her meatloaf are soaked in heavy cream! Her chili recipe looks really good but I'll have to wait until Snowpocalypse is over before I can get to the store to buy the ingredients. I'll be sure and post about it after I make it.

Thank you to the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program for providing me with a copy of this book.

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