Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir

Why it's worth it

Ina Garten's memoir tracks an unlikely path from a hard childhood through a nuclear policy job at the White House to a food shop in the Hamptons. It reads like a long, candid conversation, and it's frank about a marriage and a career that didn't always cooperate.

The backstory is the reason to read it. Most fans know Garten as the Barefoot Contessa and nothing else. The book spends real time on the years before that, including her stretch analyzing nuclear energy policy at the White House and the leap to a small specialty food store in the Hamptons. That career change should have failed. Watching her make it work is the best part of the book.

She writes like herself, not like a ghostwriter doing an impression. The voice on the page is warm, plain and unhurried, and it holds up across a full-length narrative. Published reviews single out the prose rather than the anecdotes, which is unusual for a celebrity title. If you've bounced off famous-person memoirs before, that's usually the reason, and it isn't the problem here.

From our review of 6 memoirs and autobiographies, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +The backstory is the reason to read it
• +She writes like herself, not like a ghostwriter doing an impression
• +It's candid where these books normally go quiet
• +Readers backed it immediately

What to know

• –If you came for the food, you'll be a little disappointed
• –The early chapters move slowly
• –There's no author-narrated audiobook