People magazine included The Restaurant Critic's Wife on their Great New Fiction list and hailed it as "thoroughly entertaining." Lila Soto has a master's degree that's gathering dust, a work-obsessed husband, two kids, and lots of questions about how exactly she ended up here. In their new city of Philadelphia, Lila's husband, Sam, takes his job as a restaurant critic a little too seriously. To protect his professional credibility, he's determined to remain anonymous. Soon his preoccupation with anonymity takes over their lives as he tries to limit the family's contact with anyone who might have ties to the foodie world. Meanwhile, Lila craves adult conversation and some relief from the constraints of her homemaker role. With her patience wearing thin, she begins to question everything: her decision to get pregnant again, her break from her career, her marriage-even if leaving her ex-boyfriend was the right thing to do. As Sam becomes more and more fixated on keeping his identity secret, Lila begins to wonder if her own identity has completely disappeared-and what it will take to get it back.

Author Biography

Elizabeth LaBan is the author of The Tragedy Paper, which has been translated into eleven languages, and The Grandparents Handbook, which has been translated into seven languages. She lives in Philadelphia with her restaurant-critic husband and two children.