Alice Fleck loves to cook with her dad, James. He is a culinary historian, and for years, he and Alice have been cooking historical recipes together. In fact, there is nothing they love more than to watch the cooking competition show Culinary Chronicles, a gentle competition where people recreate dishes from history while enjoying the experience of cooking together.

Alice isn’t close to her mother, so it’s always been just her and her dad. But recently, he’s started going out with a woman named Hana, and Alice doesn’t know how she feels about that. And then Hana has to go out of town for a Victorian Festival and invites Alice and James to go with her. But she has a surprise for them. Culinary Chronicles will be filming there, and Hana has entered them into the competition without telling them. And they were accepted!

But once they get to the grand manor house where the festival is being held, Alice and James find out that things have changed. The showed has been bought out by a reality television channel, and they want it to be a cutthroat competition. To make that happen, they fired the beloved host who kept things relaxed and hired the toughest cooking show judge there is, Tom Truffleman.

As the competition starts, it’s a long more challenging for Alice than she thought it would be, but she makes friends who encourage her to keep trying. And she has a chance to get to know Hana better, and Alice finds herself liking her. But then things start going wrong. Things start going wrong with the competition and things start going wrong with her dad and with Hana. Then it’s up to Alice and her new friends to figure out what’s going on and to come up with a plan to make it better.

Alice Fleck’s Recipes for Disaster is the latest middle grade novel from Rachelle Delaney. With charm and creativity, she brings Alice and her friends to life, encouraging kids to be themselves, even if that means you don’t look like or act like everyone else.

This book is packed with action. Not only is the cooking competition going on for Alice, but she also has the family issues, and she makes new friends. There is not one dull moment, from the Victorian fighting class her dad’s girlfriend teaches to the séance Alice goes to with her new friends, there is always something going on. And then there is the cooking competition where they keep changing the rules, and a mystery to solve to boot. Alice and her friends are brimming with personality, and they all work together to solve the mystery.

Alice Fleck’s Recipes for Disaster is a fun, imaginative, adorable novel that combines the modern excitement of a cooking competition with the perpetual lessons of making friends, being yourself, and making sacrifices for family. I really enjoyed reading it, and I’m sure kids of all ages will really enjoy it too.

Egalleys for Alice Fleck’s Recipes for Disaster were provided by Penguin Random House Canada through NetGalley, with many thanks.