An OK Read

In The Kitchen by Monica Ali 
Gabriel Lightfoot is an enterprising man from a northern England mill town, making good in London as executive chef at the once-splendid Imperial Hotel. He is trying to run a tight kitchen but his integrity, to say nothing of his sanity, is constantly challenged by the demands of an exuberant multinational staff, an eagle-eyed hotel management, and business partners with whom he is secretly planning to open a restaurant of his own. 
Despite the pressures, all his hard work looks set to payoff, until a worker is found dead in the kitchen's basement. The tenuous balance of Gabe's life is seriously disturbed, aided in no small way by other complications in his life. His father is dying of cancer, his girlfriend wants more from their relationship, and the restaurant manager appears to be running an illegal business right under Gabe's nose. 
Enter Lena, an eerily attractive young woman with mysterious ties to the dead man. Under her spell, Gabe makes a decision, the consequences of which strip him naked and change the course of the life he knows - and the future he thought he wanted. 

I don’t like criticising authors and I think the book was beautifully written, but oh it was tedious. Reached page 189 and nothing significant had happened. Decided to keep going though just to see if anything did happen, it was ok. 
If Ali had written solely about Gabe’s predicament and created a murder mystery it would have been a much better read. It had all the ingredients; the kitchen of a large hotel; the staff and their idiosyncrasies; Gabe trying to keep his own business venture a secret whilst coping with the demands of his position, and the dead body. 
His relationship with his girlfriend, the childhood memories, the mill where his father worked and his father’s illness were interesting, and the descriptions of his mother’s bi-polar behaviour added some bleak humour, but there was just too much of it, and at times I lost interest to the point where I couldn’t remember what I had just read. It felt like it was going nowhere VERY slowly.

~Be warm and well ~

Polly x