Alice Fleck’s Recipes for Disaster

Alice Fleck, 12, is facing many changes. She is starting middle school. She is thrilled when her father James decides she is old enough for her own cell phone, but then he invites his new girlfriend Hana over for dinner that same day. Alice is having trouble dealing with the new reality of Hana. She and her father James have a close relationship and share a love of cooking unique historical foods. When Hana comes for dinner, Hana announces that she has entered the father-daughter duo in a culinary contest on their favorite cooking show. “Every season on Culinary Chronicles, a new group of amateur cooks gathered to recreate dishes from a particular time in history. She and James had seen every episode.” (p. 9) Hana, who is a Victorian scholar, will also be at Gladstone Manor where Culinary Chronicles will be filmed for the Victorian festival. Alice is terrified of her peers discovering her love of cooking historical foods!

When Alice and her father arrive at Gladstone Manor for the competition, they are shocked to discover that their beloved cooking show is now called Culinary Combat. There is “a new look and feel” to the program with a new host and a new judge. Tom Truffleman, the new judge, is known as “the fiercest judge in the world of competitive cooking.” This is not what Alice was expecting. What has she got herself into? At first, the challenges are difficult but not impossible. However, Truffleman keeps throwing in more and more difficult tasks. Strange things also seem to happen to some of the competitors. Alice and her newfound friends, Octavia and Henry, believe that someone is sabotaging the competition. When James is accused of cheating, Alice and her friends are determined to expose the person who is trying to sabotage the cooking competition. The mystery deepens as the trio encounters ghosts, secret passages, and strange Victorian gadgets.

Alice is an intriguing character who must learn to deal with the myriad of changes in her life. She is hesitant to compete on the cooking show despite her love of culinary history because it will not be considered “cool” by her peers. When she gets a new cell phone, she becomes intrigued by the social media site PHOMO which resembles INSTAGRAM. She also has to deal with her absent archaeologist mother as well as her father’s new girlfriend, Hana. At first, Alice can’t cope with her resentment as her father’s attention shifts to a new person in his life, but she slowly comes to understand that Hana is a good person who can add a whole new dimension to their family life.

Readers who love to watch cooking shows will be thrilled with the descriptions of culinary competitions. There are also very interesting passages about Victorian life and culinary history. References to supernatural events add to the mystery in Alice Fleck’s Recipes for Disaster. Alice’s concerns about popularity and social media influencers are a realistic reflection of teenage life today. Alice learns to deal with her fears and comes to realize that the relationships in her life will help her cope with change and uncertainty in her life. As she begins middle school, she reminds readers what is important in life: “She took stock of everything she had with her: notebooks and pens, a lunch made with love, a phone full of messages from people who cared. She had everything she needed to survive middle school.” (p. 237)