All Four Stars by Tara Dairman

Gladys Gatsby has found something she loves! She loves to cook, but her parents only feed her meals coming from boxes or cans, fast-food restaurants, or that have been microwaved. Gladys secretly practices her cooking skills before her parents get home from work, but the secret comes out when she almost burns the house down. They ban her from cooking, watching cooking shows, and even reading cookbooks for the next six months! She's miserable until her new teacher at school asks the class to write about their hopes for the future. Through a series of events, Gladys finds she's been hired as a food critic for a big New York newspaper. How can she keep this secret from her parents, and how is she going to get to New York City for her first assignment? Sounds like scheming, plotting, and sneaking are in her future.

My family and I enjoy watching the competitive cooking shows, so I had a connection with the topic of this book. If you don't like cooking, you probably won't care for it. Gladys starts to act out of character, and it creates some tension. Not overly suspenseful, but there's definitely a conflict. She created new friedships with the neighbor boy, and the snobbiest girl in the class. It was funny when the neighbor was terrified of Gladys, because he thought she'd try to cook his pet rabbits in one of her recipes. I wasn't sure how the plot would develop, but it came to a satisfying conclusion.