The Ingredients of Love

Cyrano de Bergerac meets Chocolat and Amelie in this intelligent, charming, and entertaining publishing sensation from Europe.

While in the midst of a breakup-induced depression, Aurelie Bredin, a beautiful Parisian restaurateur, discovers an astonishing novel in a quaint bookshop on the Ile Saint-Louis. Inexplicably, her restaurant and Aurelie herself are featured in its pages. After reading the whole book in one night, she realizes it has saved her life—and she wishes more than anything to meet its author. Aurelie’s attempts to contact the attractive but shy English author through his French publishers are blocked by the company’s gruff chief editor, Andre, who only with great reluctance forwards Aurelie’s enthusiastic letter. But Aurelie refuses to give up. One day, a response from the reclusive author actually lands in her mailbox, but the encounter that eventually takes place is completely different from what she had ever imagined. . . . Filled with books, recipes, and characters that leap off the page, The Ingredients of Love by Nicolas Barreau is a tribute to the City of Light.

Nicolas Barreau was born in Paris, the son of a French father and a German mother. He studied romance languages and literature at the Sorbonne and worked in a bookshop on the Rive Gauche in Paris. He is also the author of One Evening in Paris, The Woman of My Dreams, and You’ll Find Me at the End of the World.