Dinner With The Schnabels (Toni Jordan)🥉

Winner: 3rd Ranked Book 2022

An adorable, funny and heart-warming book. Dinner With The Schnabels bowled me over instantly! It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say, this is the funniest book I have read to date! A modern day classic from Toni Jordan!

Set amidst the pandemic lockdowns, it is a sweet story of the Schnabel family. It begins with Tansy Schnabel visiting a law firm seeking divorce related advise. Her husband, Simon Larsen has lost his business to the lockdown and is stationed at home entangled in a sundry of household chores and a stagnant life.

A landscaping assignment for a friend comes calling. Being the venue of Tansy’s estranged father’s memorial service, it is bound by an impossibly unforgiving deadline. As Simon slugs through this daunting task, the story takes you on a joy ride with the arrival of an unexpected guest, two adorable kids and their equally adorable issues, and some unexpected situations full of wit and humor that leave you laughing out loud! With all these factors determined to derail Simon from his task, will Simon get it done on schedule? Will he meet the expectations of his family? Will he prove a worthy father and husband?

A Character Driven Story

Dinner With The Schnabels is a character driven story with winsome characters. The loud-mouthed and wacky Gloria who cracks you up each time she is in frame. The ever so adorable Lachie will endear you with his mischievous self. Mia who is a no-trouble child, a big sister when needed and a vulnerable little kid at other times. And yeah, the upstart influencer Monica with her carefree, open-hearted attitude that is highly infectious.

A Feel-Good Read

Should you be feeling low for some reason, this book is guaranteed to lift your spirits in no time. I can say this with undeniable confidence, Toni Jordan’s Dinner With The Schnabels works like magic as it casts it’s spell the moment you get reading. Page after page, it is full of crackling humor, wit and hilarious situations. It’s unexpected turns feel like a crisp slap to someone just about to ease into slumber. This is a feel good book all throughout.

Brilliant Sequences

There are some bodacious situations & sequences in the book that catapult it to a new high.

To briefly touch upon a few, there is a scene where Monica casually says “The early sperm is the good sperm”. You cannot help laughing at the effect of that whole scene. What’s more, lil Lachie picks upon the word and runs about shouting “sperm, sperm, sperm” – hahah! And they have to tell him it’s kind of a whale. So cute and funny.

How can we not mention the part of Gloria’s introduction! She comes over to Simon and Tansy’s but is not allowed inside due to the pandemic lol. And whoa! The scintillating butchering of her dead ex husband! Those dialogues are packed with side-splitting punches one after another! *claps*

The high point of the book is Gloria’s eulogy to David at the end. I won’t say much – just read and enjoy!

Uplifting

This book is not just about humor. It is one of the most beautiful uplifting reads that you would get out there. Towards the later part of the book, as the focus shifts to the doting father-daughter relation, there are some captivating scenes of lil Mia and Simon that make you go Aww! Your heart is overwhelmed by this pure and unadulterated emotion of love. It almost had me in tears.

Lockdowns! They are not all bad after all! The lockdown made Simon loose his business alright! But it eventually made him see things he never otherwise would. The simple pleasures of life. The loving family he is blessed to have. To realize what he actually wished to do with his life. It brought him closer to his family. It saved his marriage that was awaiting divorce! The yearning as a father to make himself worthy of his caring and loving children.

Conclusion:

With a book as good as this, you really don’t have much more to say! You can only experience the joy of reading it. Dinner With The Schnabels is a flawless book. I wouldn’t want to change a single thing about it. It would be best to say – if there is just one book you will read this year, let it be Toni Jordan’s Dinner With The Schnabels!

Get your copy here!

Looking for some more feel good books? Why not try these – Wahala | Book Review or The Village Inn Of Secret Dreams | Book Review