Normally, I am all for a good book to read together in class; however, in my second hour English class, Literature of the Americas, we recently read the book Like Water for Chocolate. Like Water for Chocolate is written by Laura Esquivel, and was certainly a page turner, but for all the wrong reasons. It is a frustrating tale of a girl who is an amazing cook but always seems to get the short-end of the stick, which is a result of the story’s magical realism. There is more drama in this book than there is in a whole season of Keeping up with the Kardashians. In all, there is a lot going on in a 256-page book.

The book starts off narrated by the great niece of Tita, the main character. The nameless niece tells the tale of the love and tragedy that her Great Aunt lived through. Starting off with the birth of Great Aunt, Tita is in the family kitchen balling her eyes out. This scene sets the mood for the rest of the book, foreshadowing how Tita has a deep connection with the kitchen becomes very emotional when she is cooking. Every chapter starts out with a cultural dish. As mentioned before, Tita is known for being an amazing cook, and is one of the best in her town. The only downside is that Tita’s emotions magically transfer to the consumers of each meal. Tita’s emotions affect the food on drastic scales, from making a whole wedding party depressed, to having a different wedding party have uncontrollable love towards their significant other. In all, Tita’s emotions get enhanced with her food and is spread to everyone who devours her delicious masterpieces.

Tita’s one and only love, Pedro, marries Rosaura, Tita’s older sister. Now you can imagine how awkward family dinners are after that. The fact that Tita is willing to be “the other women,” even to her sister is where things get strange. Pedro, Tita, and Russia are in a continuous love triangle. Pedro claims to have only married Rosaura to be close to Tita, yet he and Rosaura have not one but two children with her. To top off this love triangle, Doctor John Brown falls in love with Tita, eventually saving Tita from her awful relationships at home. John and Tita gain a love and comfort together, and as the story normally goes, they get engaged. However, Pedro wants Tita all to himself. The reader can obviously see how Tita’s relationships are not very healthy. The only thing that can help get Tita through the day is her love for cooking.

Tita’s cooking comes up in every single chapter, and her love and passion were the only good aspects about this book. It was nice to see a strong female lead character persevere through several dramatic events. She has been to rock bottom and back, and in all the darkness, she found love in her life and she knew how to hold on to the ones she loved. Most of her passion and emotions were shown through her cooking, as she cooked to make people happy, which helped her feel a little warmer inside. Even when she was upset and made the food have a negative effect on the people who consumed it, everyone thought it was delicious, minus her mother, who disapproved everything Tita did.

Even though Tita’s mother made her life miserable and treated her like Cinderella, the girl always finds the guy, for good of for bad. Following the fact that I did not like this book, I would still highly recommend taking Literature of the Americas because it is an outstanding class. Whether or not I liked it, you may like the book and think it is worthy of making it one your favorites. To determine if you like the book, you can go to the library and check it out, or you could take Literature of the Americas and read it for yourself.