Book Review: Dinner At Mine by Chris Smyth

When Rosie decides to get her friends together for their own version of Come Dine With Me, she's convinced they'll love it: four couples, each hosting a dinner party, each scoring the others, with one winner at the end. What could possibly go wrong?
What Rosie doesn't anticipate are the lengths her fellow hosts are prepared to go in order to claim the prize- outlandish recipes, rare ingredients sourced from abroad, and a chocolate tart that looks just too good to be homemade...
But perhaps she should be more worried about the simmering tension between the guests, as passions come bubbling to the surface and resentments begin to boil over. As the temperature in the kitchen rises, relationships wilt in the heat, and suddenly dinner seems to be about so much more than food. 

I am a massive fan of the TV show Come Dine With Me so I was particularly excited when this book arrived to review. Dinner At Mine is one of the funniest books that I have read so far this year. It's such a good idea for a book, four couples are thrown together, they don't all know each other that well and when you add the element of competition, you often learn of people's true nature.
In the book you have Rosie and Stephen, Sarah and Marcus, Justin and Barbara plus Matt and Sarah who are actually both single but they have agreed to cook together for the competition. I think that my favourite couple were Justin and Barbara, the books is split into each couple's dinner party and I had several laugh out loud moments during theirs.
I think that Chris Smyth captured how much pressure we put on ourselves when trying to please and entertain others. All of these couples want to win so that they can say they hosted the best night and it is amazing, the lengths that they will go to.
Dinner At Mine is a very entertaining read. If you like Come Dine With Me then you will love this book. This is the author's first book but I hope that he writes more as I found his writing style extremely witty and accessible.

Dot Scribbles Rating: 4/5

Many thanks to the lovely people at Simon and Schuster for sending me a copy of the book to review, Dinner At Mine is out now.