| Genre | Gay / Trans* / Mixed Orientations / Contemporary / Artists/Actors/Authors / Blue-Collar Workers / Chef/Foodie / Romance |
| Reviewed by | Serena Yates on 09-November-2026 |
Everyone in the River City has a secret, and sooner or later secrets always come out. A group of strangers meets at Ragazzi, an Italian restaurant, for a cooking lesson that will change them all. They quickly become intertwined in each other's lives, and a bit of magic touches each of them. Meet Dave, the consultant who lost his partner; Matteo and Diego, the couple who run the restaurant; recently-widowed Carmelina; Marcos, a web designer getting too old for hook-ups; Ben, a trans author writing the Great American Novel; teenager Marissa, kicked out for being bi; and Sam and Brad, a May-September couple who would never have gotten together without a little magic of their own.
The watercolor on the cover was painted by Valentyna Shpara and is used with permission. Find her on Etsy under ValrArt.
Reading this book, for one thing, made me hungry. I love Italian food, and the main couple, Matteo and Diego, run a restaurant called Ragazzi and cook a lot of food. The rest of the cast of characters adds more spice to the proceedings, and I loved it all. Another nice surprise was the “magical realism” that the author writes about in his foreword (recommended reading!). We can all use a little magic in our lives now and then, and this story had just the right touch of something unexpected and “magical” happening now and then.
Matteo is a co-owner of Ragazzi in River City, a nickname for Sacramento, California. He is in charge of the financial side of things. Diego is his husband – or so they think until a specter from the past comes back to haunt Diego – and oversees the kitchen as well as the cooking classes they organize as a marketing tool and additional income stream for the initially struggling restaurant. Diego makes numerous delectable dishes, the recipes for which are collected at the end of the book. If only I weren’t such a disaster in the kitchen! Matteo and Diego love each other a lot and I adored how they unflinchingly supported each other through all their trials and tribulations.
The rest of the cast consists of a very diverse group of people of all ages, and each of them has their own drama and problems to deal with. Most of them come to the cooking classes Diego organizes, and all kinds of relationships and cross-connections develop as the story progresses. They end up like a big family despite their differences, and I loved watching them become closer.
There is Carmelina, newly widowed, trying to define her place in the world again, and looking for the daughter she gave up for adoption because she was fifteen and too young to keep her. Marissa is a homeless teen who was kicked out by her adoptive parents when they discovered her kissing a girl. She is actually bisexual, but her bigoted ’doptermonsters, as she calls them, would not even care about that difference if they knew. Marcos is a web designer who wants something more than hookups (hence, his budding romance with Dave); he is a gay Mexican American who wants to help Marissa because he was also kicked out by his parents when he was a teenager.
Ben is a trans man who is writing the great African American Trans novel, works as a bartender at night, and falls in love with a woman called Ella who has her own tragic story. Sam and Brad have been a couple for about a year; Brad runs an LGBTQ youth center after having left a job working for a Republican state senator; Sam is a writer who recently had his first book published and is now working very hard to finish his second novel.
‘The River City Chronicles’ consists of very short chapters that are like little snippets of life. This style keeps the pace and variety high and made me want to read more every time the point of view changes. They were like little bites or tasters that made me long for the whole meal. I got that feeling of having enjoyed great food at the end of the book – so I can wholeheartedly recommend the experience and the overarching story.
If you like seeing life from multiple points of view, if you are up for a few surprises and unexpected connections between some of the characters, and if you are looking for an entertaining, sometimes dramatic, story that gets emotional more than once, you will probably like this novel as much as I did. I look forward to the sequel – ‘Down the River’ here I come!
DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by the author for the purpose of a review.
| Format | ebook and print |
| Length | Novel, 390 pages |
| Heat Level | |
| Publication Date | 29-May-2018 |
| Price | $5.99 ebook, $19.23 paperback |
| Buy Link | https://www.amazon.com/River-City-Chronicles-Scott-Coatsworth-ebook/dp/B07DCFPCGZ |
