BOOKING THROUGH THURSDAY

The question today at Booking Through Thursday.........

All other things being equal, would you rather read a book that’s hard/challenging/rewarding or light/enjoyable/easy?

I want a book with some challenge, but not so challenging I don't enjoy it. Usually if the first 5 chapters don't get me hooked I won't make it through the book. For instance. This was a book my book club picked a couple months ago. I just couldn't get into this book. It was all over the place with people and happenings going on. I couldn't keep track of who was who and what was what. I got about half way through the book and couldn't finish it.

In The Kitchen by Monica Ali

Gabriel Lightfoot, an enterprising man from a northern English mill town, is making good in London. As executive chef at the once-splendid Imperial Hotel, he aims to run a tight kitchen. Though he’s under constant challenge from the competing demands of an exuberantly multinational staff, a gimlet-eyed hotel management, and business partners with whom he is secretly planning a move to a restaurant of his own, all Gabe’s hard work looks set to pay off.
Until, that is, a worker is found dead in the kitchen’s basement. It is a small death, a lonely death—but it is enough to disturb the tenuous balance of Gabe’s life.
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.