The Stall of Second Chances by Dana Bate

What They Say:

The Stall of Second Chances is a story about love, choices, and second chances in the Internet era, at a time when our past is written in ink, not pencil, and when the decisions we make today can ripple far into the future.

Sydney Strauss is obsessed with food.

Not just with eating it - though she loves that too - but with writing about it as an aspiring cookery reporter. But food journalism jobs are more coveted than cupcakes, and so Sydney is stuck working for one of TV's biggest egomaniacs - until she's left scrambling for shifts at the local farmers' market.

Selling muffins at the Wild Yeast Bakery is hardly going to make her the next Nigella. But soon Sydney is writing the market's weekly newsletter, and her quirky stories gain attention from a prominent food columnist. After years of being left on the shelf, she's even dating again. And then Sydney gets a shot at the story, one that could either make her career or burn it to a cinder - along with her relationship and her reputation.

What I Say:

I would like to thank Grace Vincent and author Dana Bate for sending me a copy if this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

When we first meet Sydney she is working as a TV Producer, not her chosen career, so when she is laid of she takes a job at the local farmer market to make ends meet.  Sydney meets Rick one of the other stall holders.  The situations Sydney finds herself in had me laughing and cringing in equal measures, along as well as dying to find out more.

Sydney begins to write a blog and it soon attracts the attention of Stu from The Chronicle, but Stu wants something more juicy and when Sydney stumbles across something that could not only make her career but destroy her happiness what does she do?

There are so many ups and downs in this book that kept me reading and all told with delicious detail of the farmers market that I could imagine myself there.

A throughly enjoyable read and I will certainly look out for more from this author.  The story is fast passed enough that I didn't get bored.

About The Author

Dana Bate graduated from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, then became a broadcast journalist with a specialization in finance and business, and then gave it all up to write romantic comedies.

Don’t worry: none of this makes sense to her parents either.

She is the author of A SECOND BITE AT THE APPLE (published in the UK as THE STALL OF SECOND CHANCES) and THE GIRLS' GUIDE TO LOVE AND SUPPER CLUBS (published in the UK as THE SECRET SUPPER CLUB), which earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly and has been translated into five languages. Before writing fiction full time, she was a Washington producer and reporter for PBS's Nightly Business Report, where she won the Gerald Loeb Award for a series she produced on the Indian economy. She lives outside Philadelphia with her family.