Baker's Apprentice (Hendricks) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Hendricks rolls out a delicious sequel in Baker’s Apprentice... Prepare to have your appetite teased and stimulated, often.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer


Bread remains a significant metaphor for life in Hendricks's warm and savory if somewhat predictable sequel to her debut novel, Bread Alone (2001). In the fall of 1989, Wynter Morrison, now a full partner in Seattle's funky Queen Street Bakery, is still waiting for her divorce settlement to become final. The former L.A. socialite, empowered by the lessons she's learned working with bread, takes on a new responsibility: teaching Tyler Adler, an angry ex-cheerleader, about the joys and perils of baking. Meanwhile, Wyn's relationship with bartender Mac McLeod, a frustrated writer, is in trouble: "Throw some sex into the mix and it's like putting too much yeast in bread. It's all very fizzy and light and wonderful, but then it rises too high and can't support its own weight and the whole thing falls flat." Then Mac suddenly takes off, retreating to a small town where he struggles to overcome writer's block and deal with an old tragedy that has affected his romance with Wyn. When Mac returns, Wyn faces a future that might not include bread baking, and the couple learns that a recipe for life without love is totally useless. Bakers will welcome the recipes (such as for Capuccino Hazelnut Scones) that Hendricks includes.
Publishers Weekly


Readers first met Wynter Morrison in Hendricks's novel Bread Alone. Wyn is back, and she and Mac have developed a relationship she only dreamed of before. With Ellen, Wyn is running the bakery, enduring all the challenges as she continues to learn the art of bread baking. When they hire Maggie, a cake designer, the tension starts to mount. Meanwhile, Mac has sent a manuscript to a New York agent. He goes off to Alaska to work on it, leaving Wyn hurt, angry, and in a tailspin. When confronted by a threat to the bakery, Wyn draws on an inner strength she didn't realize she possessed. The novel gains momentum as the story moves along. Hendricks has created another engaging tale of modern life in Seattle. Fans of strong female characters will appreciate the cast who populate this novel. Recommended for public libraries. —Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH.
Library Journal


Readers who loved Wynter and Mac in Bread Alone (2001) will be glad to know that Hendricks cooks up a fulfilling second helping in this engaging sequel.... Hendricks' latest expresses the same heartfelt and committed love, sense of community, and pervasive kindness via fabulously cool and competent heroes. Highly recommended for both romance and women's fiction fans. —Neal Wyat.
Booklist


A sequel of sorts to Hendricks's anemic Bread Alone (2003) features the same implausible characters. Wynter Morrison, once the miserable wife of a rich man, now kneads bread in a hip bakery and flirts with disaster in the form of Mac, a freewheeling bartender. Of course he loves her. Doesn't he show up every once in a while to kiss her six ways from Sunday and pick globs of dough out of her disheveled hair? Who could ask for anything more? Not Wynter. She happily tends to the needs of the baker's regulars, like old Mrs. Gunnerson, who complains there aren't any doughnuts and packs her own teabag. The brand is duly noted, along with much other trivia that studs the practically nonexistent plot. Yet Wynter's days aren't uneventful: the bakery toilet has a broken link in the flapper-valve chain. Its dangling ends must be reconnected somehow ("I go back to the register to get a paper clip"). There are no bananas. And still no plot. The tide of Seattle life flows through the neighborhood: starving artists, a merchant marine contingent, thrift-shop patrons, the homeless, a few punkers, an occasional condo resident. Mac heads for the Yukon and writes back about the austere glory of the country where everyone goes to get lost—but, hey, he wants to find himself, a search aided by aging hippie queen Rhiannon Blue, who sells mooseburgers and reads tarot cards. Should he go back to Seattle? Every time he eats bread, he thinks of Wyn. But a man must do what a man must do—whatever that is. Lackluster atmosphere still doesn't make up for lack of a plot. Wynter frets: Did he leave because she was pushy, controlling, emotional? Maybe she can chat with her glamorpuss girlfriend CM or straighten out Tyler,a troubled teenager who serves in the shop. Uh-oh. The bakery's building is for sale. Can gentrification be far off? A whole-grain never-never-land romance of amiable stereotypes.
Kirkus Reviews