Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
When Grandma Olivia Hollis dies, her funeral brings together four generations of women in a family that is loving, complicated, and quietly fractured. Her final surprise is a New Orleans scavenger hunt written into her will: if her heirs want their inheritance, they have to follow Olivia’s weeklong itinerary through jazz cruises, swamp tours, cemeteries, and long-buried family history. Along the way, they are forced to confront old grudges, unfinished love stories, unspoken hurts, and the emotional distance that has built up between them. Set against a rich, food-filled New Orleans backdrop, Beignets and Big Feelings blends humor, heart, and romance as the women slowly rediscover one another and begin to understand that Olivia’s real gift was not money, but a second chance at becoming the family they were meant to be.
Leslie Gray Streeter is an award-winning journalist, columnist for The Baltimore Banner, and author known for pairing sharp humor with emotional honesty. That blend carries into Beignets and Big Feelings, where the multigenerational family dynamic is warm but messy, the setting is lively, and the scavenger-hunt premise gives the story an easy sense of forward motion. Streeter fills the novel with big personalities, family secrets, second chances, grief, romance, comedy, and reconciliation. It is the kind of book that will likely appeal to readers who enjoy heartfelt family stories that still leave room for jokes, side-eye, and a little romantic chaos.
I give Beignets and Big Feelings 3 out of 5 stars. I wanted to love this one immediately, but I had a hard time making it past the first chapter because the repeated use of “like” became distracting. Instead of feeling like a natural part of the narrator’s voice, it gave some early passages a more exaggerated, Cher Horowitz-style rhythm that did not quite match the successful Baltimore woman who seemed to be leading the story. There were also a few distracting errors scattered throughout the novel. Because I read an advance copy, I am inclined to assume some of those issues may be cleaned up before publication, but they did affect my reading experience.
Even with those frustrations, there were several things I genuinely enjoyed. The banter between generations is one of the strongest parts of the book, and Streeter does a lovely job showing how affection and irritation can live side by side in a family. I found pieces of the four main female characters relatable in different ways, especially in the way they carry old wounds while still wanting connection. Several moments made me laugh out loud, and the New Orleans setting gave the book a warm, sensory quality that made the food, music, and local history feel central to the experience. In the end, though, the predictability of the storyline and the early voice-related distractions kept the book from fully winning me over.
Similar to Ex En Provence, this is a quick, fun, low-stakes story set in a bucket-list location for me. New Orleans is the perfect setting for a vacation-style novel: atmospheric, flavorful, musical, and full of history. If you enjoy light family fiction with humor, heart, and a little romance, this may be a good fit, especially if you like books by Sandra Jackson-Opoku or Meg Shaffer. I would recommend it for readers looking for an easy, emotionally warm read rather than a deeply layered literary novel. One note of caution: there are brief mentions of Hurricane Katrina and draft dodging, so it may not be the ideal escape read for every reader.
Beignets and Big Feelings releases on October 13, 2026, and readers who enjoy multigenerational family stories, destination novels, and heartfelt comedy may want to add it to their fall reading list. While it was not a perfect fit for me, I appreciated its warmth, humor, and sense of place, and I can see it being a crowd-pleasing pick for readers who want a story about messy families, second chances, and the complicated work of finding your way back to one another. You can preorder your copy today in our Bookshop.org store.
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What I’m Reading
- Current print book: The Sum of All Fears, Tom Clancy
- Current audio book: The 6:20 Man, David Baldacci
- Book I’m most looking forward to: Murmuration, TJ Klune
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