Ellie Agresti is looking forward to her senior year. After having to change schools the previous year, she’d met Hunter, and they’d started dating. She’d spent her time with him and his friends, feeling safe from high school politics in this group. But when Hunter dumped her brutally right as senior year was starting, Ellie realized that she’d not taken the time to make other friends.

And then her guidance counselor refused to let her out of the popular Home Economics class that is basically Adulting 101, even though Hunter is also in the class. As is the girl he dumped Ellie for.

Ellie tries to make the best of it and joins another group, a “family” for the class. Each family will be assigned a situation where they have a family income and have to come up with a budget. Ellie and her group—Luke, A.J., and Isaiah—are a single mother with 2 kids and a job as a bus driver. They are disappointed that they’ll have to struggle to make ends meet, but all of them are have some real life experience with it.

But then Ellie finds out the best part of the class—it will all be a competition. All the tasks are points-based, and she has the chance to lead her team to beat Hunter and Brynn’s team, proving herself the better person.

As Ellie gets to know her fellow family members better, she realizes that she likes them. She works with them, encourages them, and stands up for them. And as she’s making new friends in class, she also volunteers to help with the student television news program. She wants to be a meteorologist and offers to help them with the weather segments, but they need someone to help with sports, and she soon finds that her features on different athletes wins her accolades and acceptance as herself, not just as Hunter’s girlfriend.

At a party, a game of soda pong turns into genuine feelings for Home Ec classmate Luke, and he seems to share the warm feelings for Ellie. But when she finds out that he lied to her, the way Hunter had lied to her, Ellie shuts down and refuses to listen to anything he has to say, even though Luke insists he didn’t lie. Will Ellie be able to get past her own hurt and hear what Luke has to say, or will she lose all the good things she’d been stirring up all semester?

The Secret Recipe for Moving On is a sweet, warm redemption story about growing out of situations where you no longer belong and finding the path that is truly yours. Author Karen Bischer has created a story with realistic (and beautifully snarky) characters, a believable situation, lots of laughs, a little heartbreak, a borrowed sweatshirt, a dead cell phone, and a bejeweled spatula.

When I read The Secret Recipe for Moving On, I found it to be exactly the book I was needing. I was tired and stressed out, maybe even burned out, and it offered me the escape, the grins, and the belief in humanity that I so badly needed. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone needing some time away from life’s problems, some snark, some warmth, some comfort, or the novel equivalent of a John Hughes movie to spend time with.

Egalleys for The Secret Recipe for Moving On were provided by Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group (Swoon Reads) through NetGalley, with many thanks.