ABOUT

  

​​A heartbroken New York City teen seeks a second chance at first love at a Floridian retirement community in this humorous, coming-of-age contemporary YA.

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Ali Green hates birthdays. And her sixteenth is no exception. Her ex shows up at the surprise party she didn't want, her parents are fighting, again, and Mom, not surprisingly, chooses fixing her social media image over her own daughter's birthday. Ali isn't sure her day can get any worse when a card shows up from the Nana she hasn't heard from in eight years. Ali finds seven more cards from hidden in Mom's office. And rather than count the hours until she can escape New York City for a summer at USC's film program, where she will no doubt craft another love story, she decides to secretly buy a one-way ticket to West Palm Beach and fix her own.

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But the pink-wig wearing, shiva-crashing Nana isn’t at all who Ali remembers. And worse, Ali has been replaced by the annoyingly gorgeous seventeen-year-old golf pro, Noah. In an attempt to prove her own worthiness, dethrone Noah, and win Nana back, Ali whips up the viral “orgasm-inducing” chicken recipe Mom can’t stop freaking out about. But the recipe isn’t fool-proof, and neither is Ali’s plan. Nana’s revenge video for her smoked-out kitchen accidentally turns Nana into an overnight social media sensation while simultaneously outing one of Ali’s celebrity chef mother’s most coveted recipes, and potentially Ali’s whereabouts. As Ali trades one woman’s happiness in her life for another, she begins to wonder if happily-ever-afters really, truly exist. 

 A heartbroken New York City teen seeks a second chance at first love at a Floridian retirement community in my 90,000-word humorous, coming-of-age contemporary YA, SO COOKED. For fans of Ann Liang’s This Time It’s Real and Erin McCahan’s The Lake Effect, SO COOKED also explores romance, complex family dynamics, friendships, loss, and, of course, food.