The last thing Melanie expected to lose when she went on a diet was her husband. Former lawyer Melanie Hoffman lost half her body weight and opened a gourmet take-out café specializing in healthy and delicious food. Then her husband left her—for a woman twice her size. Immediately afterwards, she's blindsided by a financial crisis. Melanie reaches out to a quirky roommate with a ton of baggage and becomes involved in a budding romance with a local documentary filmmaker. In this warm and often laugh-out-loud novel, Melanie discovers that she still has a lot to learn about her friends, her relationships with men, and herself-and that her weight loss was just the beginning of an amazing journey that will transform her life from the inside out... INCLUDES RECIPES Melanie, 39, is thrown for a major loop when, after she works hard to lose 145 pounds, her husband leaves her for a woman as heavy as Melanie used to be. Heartbroken, she throws her energy into the healthy-food café she founded, Dining by Design. Melanie is hanging on financially until she finds out that her condo association is assessing a hefty fee for a major repair, forcing Melanie to take in a roommate: free-spirited Nadia, who at 24 is on the run from a past she refuses to talk about. Despite their different backgrounds and ages, the two become friends, and Nadia starts working part-time at the café. The novel’s conflicts are few and relatively tame, but food lovers will certainly appreciate Ballis’ sumptuous descriptions of the meals Melanie and her friends cook up; and 40 pages of recipes are provided for readers eager to try their hand at some of the dishes. --Kristine Huntley Praise for Stacey Ballis and her novels   “With the perfect blend of humor and heart, Ballis’s writing is powerfully honest and genuinely hilarious.”—Jen Lancaster, New York Times bestselling author of By the Numbers   “Her storytelling will have you alternately turning pages and calling your friends urging them to come along for the ride.”—Elizabeth Flock, New York Times bestselling author of What Happened to My Sister   “Smart, sexy, and delightfully buoyant…Scrumptious.”—Quinn Cummings, author of The Year of Learning Dangerously   “A sparkling, heartwarming novel with all the elements of a can’t-put-it-down read—a heroine you’ll root for, unexpected plot twists, and dangerously good descriptions of food!”—Sarah Pekkanen, author of Things You Won’t Say   “Insightful and hilarious.”— Today’s Chicago Woman Stacey Ballis  is the author of ten foodie novels:  Inappropriate Men ,  Sleeping Over ,  Room for Improvement ,  The Spinster Sisters ,  Good Enough to Eat ,  Off the Menu ,  Out to Lunch ,  Recipe for Disaster ,  Wedding Girl , and  How to Change a Life . She is a contributing author to three nonfiction anthologies:  Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys ,  Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume , and  Living Jewishly . Author: Ballis, Stacey. Publisher: Berkley Pages: 308 Publication Date: 2010 Edition: 1 Binding: Paperback MSRP: 15 ISBN13: 9780425229637 ISBN: 0425229637 Other ISBN: 9781101442951 Other ISBN Binding: print Language: en Quality Rating: 1 "Book cover image may be different than what appears on the actual book."