Rating: 
Summary: delicious tale of life's possibilities......
Review: This is a warm and spirited story about discovering your true passion in life and making it an integral part of your everyday life. In this tale Ruth, devoted wife, mom and daughter handles her stress by indulging her love of baking. Life hands her a lemon and she manages to bake a lemon cake! When her husband is unexpectedly let go from his job, she bakes her stress away......when her long lost father suddenly turns up needing help while he recovers from a serious accident, Ruth continues baking her stress away.......when her father needs to move in (never mind that his estranged wife, Ruth's mother, is currently living there) and her teenage daughter seems to be pulling away from the family, Ruth does what she does best and bakes wonderful,beautiful and tantalizingly luscious cakes. When those around her begin to seek true happiness and joyful dedication to working at what they love and not settling for "just a paycheck", Ruth feels that her world is being shaken to it's foundation. Then a comment she hears changes the possibilities of her life. She rises to the challenge as best as she can and that is when the story is both heartwarming and inspiring.
This tale is a delicious story of family, love, understanding and helping those around you to open the door to the possibilities in their lives.
As a bonus, the author includes some outstanding cake recipes in the last section that will appeal to the baker in you.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Read
Review: I discovered Ms. Ray before I started reading her daughter's books, Ms. Ann Patchett. I'm not sure how I found her, just something about the premise of Julie and Romeo struck a cord, so I read it and enjoyed it so much. Well, then I read her second novel and enjoyed it also, so I was thrilled when this showed up on my amazon recommendations. I curled up with this book and read it in one day, with very few interruptions, and I was so involved with the characters, that by the end of the book, I felt as if I knew them. This is a fun, hopeful read and had some lines in it that I quoted out loud to the family, much to their dismay, since I then had to explain who everyone was and what was going on.
Anyway, read this book when you need a warm, lovely diversion from your life. The main character sees herself in cakes to relieve stress, I used this author's book as my therapy. Thank you Ms. Ray.
Rating:
Summary: A delicious taste of words
Review: This would have to be one of the best books I have read in a long time. Jeanne Ray tells the story of Ruths life in a way that makes her faimly seem like the average type. Anytime i feel bothered or frustrated I now picture myself inside a deliously home made bunt cake. I love it and i want there to be a another story about ruths crazy life.
Rating:
Summary: A delightful confection from a very talented author.
Review: "Eat Cake" is the third thoroughly charming book from the wonderful Jeanne Ray. Each of her books has featured two main themes. One is that everyone should find a vocation or a passion in life, such as selling flowers, tap dancing, or in this case, baking sumptuous cakes. Ray also explores the theme of how people fall in and out of love.Ruth Hopson, the main character in "Eat Cake," is a primo baker. Her family wishes that she would stop baking already, since they are up to their ears in cakes. Suddenly, Ruth's husband, Sam, loses his job, and the family is seriously strapped for cash. Ruth's mother, Hollis, lives with her. Hollis is mortified when her long-long husband, an irresponsible drifter who plays piano in lounges, shows up at his daughter's house to recuperate from a freak accident. Hollis has no desire to live with her despised husband under one roof. Jeanne Ray takes all of these ingredients and mixes them up into a delicious souffle. The comic exchanges between the characters are priceless. Ray beautifully depicts how the members of this family slowly begin to look at one another in a new light. She demonstrates how we take our relatives for granted until we realize how precious and indispensable they really are. An added treat, for those who love to bake, is the section in the back of the book that is chock full of cake recipes. For a pleasant read that will tickle your funny bone and make you ravenous for a delicious piece of cake, pick up this enchanting novel.
Rating:
Summary: Sweet and satisfying!
Review: It was irresistable to read of all the wonderful cakes made in this book, and not make some myself. I couldn't help it- plus, there are recipes at the end! This book kept me very entertained all the way through, I could barely put it down. I'm looking forward to reading more of Ray's books.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite Tasty
Review: Jeanne Ray has baked up a deliciously good, cute fairy tale story with her third novel, Eat Cake. Life has thrown Ruth Hopson, the main character, a curve ball. She is living with her moody teen daughter, her husband who has just lost his job and her tenacious mother. And if that wasn't enough, Ruth's disabled, nomadic father comes to live with her. How does Ruth deal with all this? She imagines herself inside a big warm cake! Baking is Ruth's happy place and she has a feeling its healing qualities just might turn the family around, both emotionally and financially. Pull up the covers and sit down with a big slice of cake for this enjoyable, warm-hearted, stress-relieving story.
Rating:
Summary: A baker's delight
Review: After finishing this book, all I could think of was to scour my cookbooks to bake some delicious cakes! It's a sweet and delightful story that makes you forget your troubles for a time. I love novels with food themes in it ~~ the only problem is, it makes me hungry all the time! So if you're on a diet, this book is not to read ~~ it will make your mouth water at some of those cake names (and the recipes in the back too!)! Ruth escapes to the center of a cake whenever she's stressed out. She's stressed out plenty ~~ a kid in college, another kid at home, a husband who lost his job, a mother who moved in with them, her father who broke both wrists and needed someone to care for him ~~ it was enough to send anyone to run screaming from their house. And what does Ruth do? She escapes by baking lots of cakes. And that was just the beginning of a career for her. It's a short novel but oh so delightful to read! You keep turning the pages to keep reading more of a world that could be yours if you follow your dreams. It's one of the better novels I've read in awhile. 2-10-04
Rating:
Summary: Eat Cake
Review: A great read. Fast, too. In a day of swearing, sex scenes and too much adult content, this book is refreshing change. A well-written plot and highly developed characters.
Rating:
Summary: A treat...
Review: I don't know why I like this author's work so much. I suspect it's some of the same thing that makes Ruth's cakes so intriguing and full of "character" as Florence, the occupational therapist, puts it. And she should know. She's got a good bit of it herself. Ray's characters are real women, living, loving and trying to deal with what happens when what you thought was true isn't true anymore? Or was never true at all? I read through this book in a night, crying, laughing and nodding as God answered through these short pages some of my own questions, one's I'd been too afraid to ask. A good book wounds with questions and sends a reader scurrying for answers. A great book pricks sweetly and offers a piece of cake so delicious the questions answer themselves, hoping to have a bite. Do yourself a favor. Eat cake.
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Summary: Ray is not a literary writer; but she aims to please
Review: Once again, Jeanne Ray has delivered a comfortable, fun, enjoyable story for us all. Her style is easy to read, her characters are both familiar and quirky--and that's no small feat for a writer!--and her plots are plausible and yet interesting to follow. I enjoy the fact that her heroines are older women. These are the women you actually know. They aren't in their 30s, in publishing, and single, hunting for Mr. Right. They are women in the trenches; women you would be friends with if they lived nearby. Ruth, the main character of Eat Cake, is such a woman. In this novel, Ms. Ray pulls in the added dimension of a complicated relationship with her father. The reader gets a nice glimpse into the psyche of a man who is off our beaten path, and the author has gotten to know him well. All in all, not a bad way to spend some cozy evenings. Good book!
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