The Divine Proverb of Streusel by Sara Brunsvold

The Divine Proverb of Streusel by Sara Brunsvold
Series: A Standalone
Publisher: Revell (January 16, 2024)

REVIEW BY PRISCILLA BETTIS

First, let’s tackle that awesome title. Nikki is a twenty-something high school teacher. It’s summer, and she finds a handwritten recipe book in her late grandparents’ farmhouse. Is it her grandmother’s book? A great aunt’s, or maybe a collaboration by several ancestors? We don’t know (until later in the book!). The cool thing is each recipe is preceded by advice about home and family and hospitality, as if older women in the family were taking seriously the Biblical mandate to “train the young women.”

The handwritten proverb introducing the streusel cake recipe is especially meaningful, thus the title of this novel.

Besides Nikki, other major characters include her distant, difficult dad, her tenacious mother, and her shy Uncle Wes. We learn their motivations, their past hurts, and their personality quirks. I understood Nikki’s dad’s pain. I felt her mother’s strength. When Uncle Wes read his Bible every morning, I studied along with him, gaining insight.

There’s also a wonderfully eccentric great aunt, Aunt Emma. She’s a hoot and gives this serious book much needed comic relief.

Avid cooks will enjoy the recipes included in the story. Nikki tries each recipe, learning her ancestors’ ways. Readers are treated to sensory-filled passages about cooking like this one when Nikki is making a potato-egg hash:

She dropped the fat portion into the hot pan in slices. They wilted and glistened over the surface. A sizzle rose like a glorious song when she added the potatoes, the theme of a masterpiece unfolding.

-Sara Brunsvold, The Divine Proverb of Streusel

There is a romance (maybe two) in the book, but romance is not the focus. The story is about how to love the unlovable. How to forgive the unforgivable. And family. (Still, the romance had me teary-eyed by the end!)

Needless to say, The Divine Proverb of Streusel is a character-driven book. If you need a fast-paced story and high-action scenes, this is not the book for you. But if you are okay with Brunsvold taking eleven paragraphs for Nikki to wipe crumbs from the table and shake out the rag (all the while hinting that the crumbs are symbolic of something more), then this is the book for you.

I loved it!

I read The Divine Proverb of Streusel via NetGalley.