Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg
Just Watch Me has a certain flaming-car-crash-you-can’t-look-away-from quality that I really admire in a book. In a painfully accurate depiction of how it feels to be young and very stupid in New York City, we watch human raccoon Dell rise to niche livestream fame eating very spicy peppers. We root for her, despite the fact that she seems to be sabotaging herself and every single one of her relationships. On purpose. But that’s what we grow to love about her, as do her livestream viewers… until one rogue account threatens to bring Dell’s spicy food empire toppling down.
Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg, (List Price: $28.99, Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster, 9781668091180, January 2026)
Reviewed by Ryan, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina
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I could spend years in a cookbook shop and never get bored. Where do I begin? I love the weirdness of cookbooks; how they capture the larger culture of a specific time-period and tell the tale through the prism of food. Take, for example, one of my cookbook treasures: The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook by Robin Leach. It’s a time capsule of the eighties — glass block, Dynasty-style hairdos, Brooke Shields — and the food is as awful as the fashion. Or another favorite: A Treasury of Great Recipes by Vincent and Mary Price, a collection of all the menus that the famous horror maestro and his wife collected over their world travels in the ‘40s and ‘50s and the meals that they hosted for their friends in their exquisite Hollywood home. If I could jump into the pages of a cookbook, it might be that one.
