Rating: 
Summary: A DELICIOUS READ!
Review: Meet Ruth, a stay-at-home Minneapolis mom with two almost-grown children. Ruth is perfectly happy with life as it is....her mother is living with her and her oldest child is in college..things are pretty good. Any stress that Ruth feels is quickly relieved when she lets her imagination take her inside a cake...or, if very stressed, she bakes one.Then her husband of many years, Sam, is fired from his job as a hospital administrator. Her absentee, piano-playing father falls down the stairs breaking both wrists, and is suddenly unable to take care of himself--or play the piano, which is his livelihood. Ruth has no choice but to bring him into the home also....but her parents hate each other. Or do they? In any event, Ruth finds herself baking A LOT. When it becomes clear that Sam is in no hurry to rejoin the workforce, and money becomes an issue, something needs to be done. It takes a no-nonsense occupational therapist, after tasting one of Ruth's cakes, to encourage her to take matters into her own hands. So Ruth enters the cake-baking business, and everyone in the family gets into the act. Mom Hollis makes beautiful boxes to house the cakes, daughter Camille constructs the business cards and marketing strategy, and dad uses his piano bar contacts to gain Ruth access to the best hotels in the area. When the business takes off with a bang--Ruth begins to feel overwhelmed and insecure. It takes major support from her family, and a reaffirmation of her love for husband Sam to instill in Ruth the fact that her new venture has all of the trappings of true success. A delightful read...and tasty too!
Rating: 
Summary: Mid-Life Trials and Romance
Review: This is a charming little book that shows how a woman copes by baking cakes. In fact, the "safe" place she goes in her mind when under stress is inside a nice warm cake. Ha! The plot is fairly predictable, but it's a nice little story about coping with middle-age and family life. The characters are all lovingly flawed, although exceptional human beings. It's a fun read.
Rating: 
Summary: Deliciously Delectable
Review: EAT CAKE is the first Jeanne Ray book I've read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Warm and witty, filled with endearing characters, it went down easy and left me smiling when I finished the final page. Now I've ordered STEP BALL CHANGE and JULIE AND ROMEO and expect to enjoy them just as much.
Rating:
Summary: Simple. Elegant. Tasty.
Review: This was an absolutely fabulous and unique book that I completely enjoyed. Sam and Ruth live with Ruth's mother and their 16 year old daughter. Their world is turned upside down when Sam loses his job and Ruth's father is in an accident and needs to move in to be looked after by the family. Ruth's parents don't care much for one another and fight constantly. Ruth tries to keep everything together, but when Sam decides he'd rather look at buying and selling boats as a trade rather than the job he's been doing for the past 20 years, the whole family decides it might be time for Ruth to get a job herself. Ruth loves to bake cakes, so what better idea than to go into a cake baking business. The whole family gets involved in supporting Ruth's new career move. The book is well written and charming. I absolutely loved it. To top it all off, at the back of the book there are cake recipies for all the cakes mentioned in the book. What a unique idea! Great book.
Rating:
Summary: Mouth-watering Narrative
Review: Cake is not my favorite dessert, but Ray's novel "Eat Cake" had my mouth in heat for just one piece. Ruth Hopson's life turns hectic when her husband looses his job and her long-absent-from- her-life father is injured and moves in with The family, a family that already includes his ex-wife. Ruth's safe place in life has always been inside a cake. This humor filled novel will have you searching for tissue and hungering for one slice of Ruth's supurb cake. "Eat Cake" is Jeanne Ray at her very best and as an added plus the book ends with glorious cake recipes.
Beverly J Scott author of "Righteous Revenge" and "Ruth Fever." Reviewer for Intriguing Authors and Their Books
Rating:
Summary: Eat Cake is soooo Sweet!
Review: Take a middle aged housewife, a husband who just lost his job, a sarcastic grandma, an artsy piano playing grandpa, and a snotty know it all teenager...... Who by the way live under the same roof... And What do you have? All of the ingrediants for a delicious novel! While the rest of the world copes by getting drunk or writing poetry...Ruth bakes cakes! And not just your run-of-the-mill cakes, but unbelievably moist, delectable cakes. Sweet potato cakes, expresso cakes, orange cake w/burnt orange frosting.... ohhhhhhhh yeeees! Instead of blowing up...Ruth measures baking powder, sugar, flour, pure vanilla and beats the mixture to perfection. In the meantime...the grandma and grandpa, who have been separated for years, argue continually. The teenage daughter is cranky as heck, and Ruth's husband is thinking about buying a sail-boat!
Well, you could say, it's a little tense around the house. So, Ruth bakes. When I want to go someplace, a quiet safe place, I go inside a cake, Ruth says. "Eat Cake" has all the right stuff that add up to a moist, crumbless, lush, sweet dessert! Ruth will share her cakes with many people in this book, and she will share her recipes with the reader in the end. I still taste the sugar on my tongue!
Rating:
Summary: In a word -- yum!
Review: Reading this book is like munching on cake -- homemade cake, not too sweet, with just the right amount of icing. The pages turn quickly and you begin to relax and feel good about the world. And you're tempted: can you get another piece later? The book's opening is a winner. Ruth, attending a stress clinic, encounters the common exercise to take yourself to a safe place. She has trouble at first but soon realizes her safe space is right inside a warm Bundt cake. Makes me hungry just thinking about it! Ruth's life is about baking cakes -- from scratch. She bakes to relax. She bakes to win friends. She bakes -- well, to bake! And ultimately baking is what saves her and her family batches of trouble. Her husband's job disappears in a merger. Her father, wrists broken, comes to stay awhile. Her daughter is being a typical teenager. And under the same roof is her mother who hisses and spits like a cat at the sight of her ex-husband, Ruth's father. Now, Ruth realizes, she really needs those stress classes. Instead, she finds inspiration from her father's physical therapist, a character the dust jacket compares to Cheryl Richardson, and her father himself. Ruth begins a new venture and that's where the book gets a little heavy on the icing. Ruth is immensely gifted, but talent is not enough, whether you're a baker or a writer. Miraculously, everyone in Ruth's family -- as well as the helpful physical therapist -- contributes a skill or connection to the enterprise. Plausible? Yes. The author of Girls with the Grandmother Faces published her first book with the help of her family, around her own kitchen table. Lucky? Also yes. In some families the parents would be whiny wet blankets, the daughter a teen pregnancy waiting to happen and the college-age son a delinquent. I must admit I'm a little biased against books that present starting a business as nearly effortless. However, sometimes you want to enjoy a cake and forget the calories. And sometimes you want to enjoy a well-written feel-good story where the fairy godmother is a composite of most of the folks in the heroine's life and it takes six months, not a wave of the wand, to move the reader to a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: Delicious Reading!
Review: Funny and oh-so-contemporary in today's economic doldrums. As a wife, mother of teenagers, and author (NEW PSALMS FOR NEW MOMS: A KEEPSAKE JOURNAL)I can really relate to this book. I also play the piano, but that's just icing on the cake. Read and savor!
Rating:
Summary: I Love This Author!
Review: I love Jeanne Ray! And I can't believe all three of her books haven't been optioned for movies, because these warm, funny, delightful tales would make terrific films. Like "Step Ball Change", her newest, "Eat Cake" follows a warm, close and loving family that is thrown into chaos by a series of unsettling events. Where that earlier novel features dancing, this one has the heroine, Ruth, excelling at baking cakes. Cakes are her comfort, her hobby, and her intuitive skill. And although we can, I admit, see where this tale is going early on, it takes most of the novel for Ruth to see that baking cakes may also be her financial salvation. If you haven't read Jeanne Ray you are in for a treat. Ray is the mother of novelist Anne Patchett.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Review: This book was a delightful summertime read. It isn't one of the heavy, meaningful, dark books that so many of the book clubs recommend (thankfully!) -- it is a refreshing, enjoyable tale that makes the reader want to keep the pages turning; it also grants a feeling of happy resolution at the end. It's an inspiration to me that Jeanne Ray started writing later in her life, and her stories show the depth of her wisdom about human nature. Maybe she won't win a Pulitzer Prize, but her books are clean, light-hearted, and thoroughly enjoyable.
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