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'Raw and deeply moving.
A truly honest celebration of life's two great passions: food and love.'

REVIEWS

♡

REVIEWS ♡

Jane Harper
Bestselling author of Exiles and The Dry

  • The words pulled me in, their deep and raw emotional paragraphs had me feeling as if I had stumbled upon someone’s diary. In which case I essentially had.

    Life is messy, it is complicated, it is full of pathways that rise and fall, divert and send us in directions that we perhaps never imagined. However, it is in these moments where lessons are learned. Namely about ourselves.

    Charlotte’s honesty is captivating. The way her words open up throughout the book made me feel as if she was sitting there, right next to me. My eyes welled up with both tears of sorrow and of happiness as I savored every last word. By the time I had finished reading the book in its entirety, the clock read 1:15am and I had a hankering for a boiled egg and butter laden toast soldiers.

    It’s full of beauty, love, loss, hunger, grief, happiness. But above all it is the honesty that exudes from the very being of the authors words, of what it takes to find courage amidst the challenges, how to Ignite the love within and the healing qualities of food that nourishes the soul even in the depths of self-despair.


    - Amy

  • When I picked up Heartbake, I thought I would take my time and enjoy it slowly, like a long Sunday lunch.

    Instead I started and devoured it so quickly like the biggest bowl of comfort food, nourishing my soul and my heart.

    Charlotte’s way of writing is like reading my own journal, except if I was more articulate and self-aware. She draws you in with emotions and heart and reminds you life is full of ups and down, heartache and so much love and joy.

    Her infectious personality shines through and leaves you smiling even when your heart aches for her story.

    Cannot recommend this enough, for women, men and everyone, it is a beautiful book. There have been only a small handful of books that have touched my soul and heart the way Heartbake did.

    10/10 is not enough to give this book.

    - Connor

  • Beautifully written, Charlotte articulates the things the people in general and women in particular all feel, but never talk about. How so much of how we see ourselves and who we are is based on other people's reflected version of us or some idealised version of 'life' and when that's taken away...rebuilding is one of the hardest things a person will ever do.

    Each reader's own experiences may be different but the underpinning themes of loss, grief, fear and that one absolutely heartbreaking moment of broken joy when you realise that all hope is not yet lost- that's universal. This is a book that tells you that you're not alone. When all masks are stripped away, and the rebuilding is underway, what remains is fierce, immensely strong and imperfectly human.

    - Harriet

  • Charlotte Ree's Heartbake was a balm to my food-loving, feeder-tendency soul. It's a celebration of living, loving, and how food can be a marker for life's milestones – this book is a literal feast for one. We get to experience how pivotal food has been for Charlotte, and how that could (or already does) extend to each of us – the power of its life-giving power and of its absence.

    There were multiple times throughout the book where I would describe Charlotte as a phoenix. To live fully and authentically is to be vulnerable and brave – and Charlotte has both of these qualities in spades, and comes back to life, to live in it and experience it, over and over. How lucky we are that she has laid bare her soul and retold her story so that we can celebrate how far she's come.

    - Diem

  • A wonderful celebration of the human condition. A real recount of what it means to exist in our society's social fabric; love, relationships, family, and self-discovery.

    Charlotte's words recount the transformation we undertake as we discover how to navigate love in all its forms and the complexities of learning to find our way. This memoir, in all its honesty and moments of sensitivity, sheds light on how we should stand in solidarity for ourselves.

    Heartbake maps the spectrum of human emotion, an unfiltered lens in which readers are given space to process their own story. Readers are equipped with rituals and tools we can use as a means of survival and contrastingly, pleasure.

    A book that transports you out of loneliness and into the yolky center of Charlotte's ever-expanding heart. I have never felt more close to an author's story..or humanity.

    - Valery

  • Wow what can I say it’s breathtaking. What a talent. This book is a memoir of self-love, heartache, loving, losing, resilience and growth. I completely inhaled it in one sitting yesterday! What a WRITER. I was completely in this books handcuffs!

    I found it very page-turny I couldn’t put it down. Yet I was conscious I was nearing the end and feeling anxious by this. I didn’t want it to end.

    As soon as I finished I just had to get into the kitchen and cook. I had the biggest urge to feed my loves and myself with delicious food.

    No reader will be dissapointed!

    - Lori

  • I devoured this book. Charlotte had an incredible way with words. She so honestly portrays so many of our own thoughts, but in the best way. I read an advance copy, without the details of the recipes and will now count down each day until I can make every single one.

    This book is good for the soul. A delight to read, and so easily devoured before you can even pause to save it.

    Thank you Charlotte for baring your soul on these pages, I couldn’t recommend it more highly (and as the description said it’s Dolly Alderton meets Crying in HMart which is a perfect combo in my view!)

    - Harriet

  • I was very fortunate to receive an advanced copy of Charlotte Ree’s memoirs ‘Heartbake’. It’s quite a read. It’s an incredibly raw and honest account of life and love after she left her marriage .. no holds barred! It’s her journey of self discovery and self love and the recipes that soothed along the way. The book includes these recipes. Charlotte has an incredible gift for expressing her emotions into words … an inspiring read.

    - Jessie

  • I was lucky enough to be sent a proof of this fab book. What a privilege to have the opportunity to read this memoir before it’s release. Thank you Charlotte.

    I read Heartbake in one sitting. I couldn’t put it down. This book is raw, funny, sad, honest and genuine. As I read, I could relate to so much. For food lovers you will appreciate this book.

    Thank you Charlotte for sharing your story. I was disappointed when I’d finished. I wanted more!

    - Maug

  • Moving in both content and cuisine, this memoir is vulnerability at its most delicious. I was pleased to receive a preview of HEARTBAKE and know I will be gifting the book to girlfriends who have lost loves and friendships over the years, and who miss the connectedness that can only come from cooking together. Charlotte at once makes you long for those connections and appreciate the importance of quality over quantity. Most of all, this is an easy-to-devour book on love — of food, friends, fellows, and finding yourself.

    - Tammi

  • Finished it. Devoured this book. Every word. Every recipe. Holy smokes. Every person should read this book. You will see parts of yourself in Charlotte’s story. And you will finish it feeling as if you have made a new friend. Her words paint a picture that is alive with colour and movement. The way she shares her story will speak to all of us that have lost part of ourselves in trying to love others only to realise that we have to untangle so much of our lives to find our way back to our own self. Huge love for this book.

    - Tess

  • A searing and beautiful account of heartache and healing. I haven’t read a more honest account on the messiness of being human. Raw and compelling in its telling and vulnerability, it was at times unsettling.

    It’s also a love letter to the self, expressed through delicious recipes and the healing power of food.

    - Helen

  • What a beautiful journey! I laughed, I cried, but most importantly I felt a closeness to the author I did not expect.

    The raw honestly and relatability came as a breath of fresh air and upon closing the book I felt strangely refreshed and at peace.

    A must read, and a definite on my “read again” list.

    - Tarlan

  • Wow what a book I think everything Charlotte has gone through as a young person and to put it in writing can be confronting for some ! But I like to look at it this was a building block to the beautiful adult she has become ! It’s best to have loved and be loved than never experience the euphoria it brings ! Now I’m off to boil an egg while I read it again.

    - Anne

  • Such a brave and baring story to be told, the vulnerability and openness is encouraging and inspiring. Charlotte really let's you into her heart and her world for a journey that is ultimately a triumph!

    Engaging. Honest. Humanistic.

    - Tom

  • I devoured Heartbake like a warm, jam filled doughnut. Charlotte Ree has written magnificently and eloquently about the caramel sweet and fresh cut lemon sour of life – about family, the quest to be 'someone’s someone' and about food, glorious food!

    - Natalie Paull, Beatrix Bakes

  • A thoughtful, emotive and beautifully composed memoir that was hard to put down. Each time distraction tore me away from the pages, I looked forward to returning. The book made me laugh, cry and spend hours in self reflection. Loved it.

    - Kasturi

  • Vulnerable, jagged, raw and yearning, Charlotte’s book is comfort food for all those seeking more from their own lives. Women will relate deeply to Charlotte’s experiences which she portrays with unflinching honesty. There’s a deep tenderness in her story-this book will reignite your own hunger to live the truth of your own life.

    - Emma

  • A little book with a big heart ♥️

    - Paul

  • One of the books I’m most excited to read this year!

    - Georgia

Cookbook author Charlotte Ree ended her marriage at the start of the pandemic. Since then, she has been slowly emerging into her new beginning courtesy of a recipe for happiness that involves cooking for one.

CHARLOTTE REE

ON THE TRANSFORMATIONAL POWER OF FOOD

  • I grew up in the country and my earliest memory is making jam drops with my grandmother. It was my job to do the thumbprints and then to scoop out the jam. Nanny likes to say I put more batter in my mouth than I did the cookies.

    Growing up, food wasn’t anything to me but a means to survive. My mum was the breadwinner in our family and my stepdad was a stay-at-home mum for us. It’s horrific to remember now, but when we came home he would ask us what we’d want to eat: I’d say pesto pasta, Mum would say meat and three veg and my brother would say tacos. And he would make us three different meals! He wasn’t a demonstrative person whereas we very much were. I now realise that cooking was his way of showing love.

    I moved to Sydney when I was 17, and two years later I met Diego, the man who would eventually become my husband.

    My best friend, who I’ve known since I was 16, grew up with him and I had heard a lot of stories about him from her. So when I saw him one night out at a pub in Newtown, I shouted: “Oi, Diego!” He had no idea who I was. But we got together then and stayed together for 10 years. I was 19 when we met, 29 when our marriage ended.

    Before I met Diego, cooking wasn’t a priority for me. I knew how to make pasta sauce from a jar, tacos from a packet, and anything with three veg on the side. That was it. But Diego came from a family of restauranteurs and he taught me how to cook. He showed me how to make bolognese, how to make lasagne, how to sous-vide meat, how to make fresh pasta. We fell into the same routine that I had as a child; I worked so much at my job—as a publicist at one of the country’s biggest publishing houses—that he became the cook. One thing I did do, though, was bake. I began baking because I was incredibly stressed at work. I was doing it for me, at three or four in the morning, to help me switch everything off and focus on just one thing. One thing that also produced an instant result: you could put a few ingredients in a bowl and have a whole cake within an hour. It was both anxiety management and therapy for me.

    You’re a very different person at 19 to the person you are at 29. I didn’t leave Diego because I didn’t love him, I left because I needed more for myself. I could see myself staying in a relationship that wasn’t fulfilling for a variety of reasons. That was just comfortable. I think our goals weren’t aligned anymore. There was still so much love there and so much respect there and so much understanding, but we just couldn’t give each other what we wanted. We had already been in couple’s therapy for about a year when I made the decision to end it. I’d been thinking about it for a while, but usually with a big life decision I am quite indecisive. The person I sought advice from was my best friend. I begged her to tell me what to do—and she told me that I already knew. I did know, and so I left.

    I moved out in the middle of March 2020 and then lockdown happened. It was a strange period adjusting to living on my own for the first time in my life, while grieving the end of my marriage and also thinking about the future. I knew that the only way for me to pull myself out of all that was to cook. I knocked on my new neighbours’ doors and introduced myself as someone who loves to cook, who lives alone, and who was going to be cooking a lot. “I’m not going to poison you,” I told them. “Please let me cook for you.” One of my neighbours was a single mum who had lost her job during Covid and we were both really struggling. I would cook dinner for myself and take the leftovers to her most nights. And eventually, when things started opening up again in Sydney, I also began cooking on dates. Really cooking.

    On one of my first dates I made lasagne. From scratch. My date was a gorgeous cinematographer. We met on Bumble. (Eventually, he made it clear that for him, dating apps were about meeting friends and not meeting people to be in a relationship with. This was completely foreign behaviour to me.) We rolled out the pasta dough together and layered it with a slow-cooked 24-hour ragu. I don’t know if I count this man as a relationship, given that nothing ever really happened between us, but while we were quasi seeing each other, we also made ricotta gnocchi, curry pastes, baked barramundi and a perfect chiffon cake. Later, I met a rower—also on Bumble—who had a lot of dietary restrictions. I spent the four months that we dated barbecuing a lot of meat. He ghosted me after a weekend away in Orange. Then came a doctor, with whom I dove headfirst into a relationship that, to me, felt very serious. I made him sashimi platters, handmade ravioli stuffed with homemade pesto and asparagus risotto. Two months after we started seeing each other he broke up with me on the phone after I told him that my grandmother had died. I was so shocked that I didn’t know how to respond, and we didn’t speak after that.

    Why did I do this? Why did I spend most of my first year out of the longest relationship of my life, cooking for other people? I’m still trying to figure that out. Part of me believes it has something to do with the fact I was on my own after such a long time and needing people to like me. Actually, it was more than that—needing people to need me. My friends will vouch for that. I am sure that at different points they have all felt deeply uncomfortable with the amount I have given them. In 2020, when restrictions eased, I hosted someone’s wedding. I catered four separate 30th birthday parties. I cooked countless four-course dinner parties. And when I say that my friends are uncomfortable it’s because they see me better than I see myself. Not, oh my god, she’s throwing all of this at us. But oh my god—I can see what doing all of this is doing to her. But I can also see how much she wants to do it for me.

    It took breaking up with the doctor for me to realise that something had to shift. It’s taken me a lot of work with my sensational therapist to realise that when I cook for people, I’m also giving away a part of myself. Food is a love language for me and I use it to show people that I care. But I need to work on loving myself and showing myself the same care that I show others. And since food is such a love language for me, I needed to learn how to cook for myself. To really love myself.

    I used to think cooking for one person was completely unexciting, but now I know that there is beauty in the simplicity. A piece of Sonoma sourdough with beautiful ham, tomato and cheese, put under the grill. Oats in the morning. Big vats of homemade pesto. Lots of pasta—I’m a carb-loader. I’m still making 24-hour ragus that I’ll turn into lasagne and freeze in individual portions. This kind of cooking is me finally understanding that I can give myself exactly what I want. That I am enough to fulfil all of my own needs.

    It’s all a work in progress. I spent a third of my life in a relationship that I’m not in anymore. But I think my philosophy on life in general shifted over the past year of cooking, and eating, and living for just me. I didn’t think I would be single when I was 30, but I’m really grateful for what I’ve gone through this past year, because I’ve learnt more about myself than I could have possibly imagined. Some days, I feel like I’ve hit my sweet spot. Others I think I have so far to go. Life has its ebbs and flows but I’m so thankful to be in the position I am in. I couldn’t recognise myself last year when I left my relationship. I can now. And instead of planning ahead, right now, I’m just trying to be.