That part was true, by Deborah McKinlay

A charming short book that involves elements of a cozy English and/or cooking mystery, although it is not a mystery, and an epistolary novel.  Eve lives alone in her lovely home in rural England now that her rather difficult mother has died.  Her husband decamped after a short marriage and the birth of one daughter, Izzy.  Izzy, like her grandmother, who was largely responsible for raising her, is a disconcertingly capable person who rather intimidates her more introverted mother.  Now Izzy is engaged and Eve must cope with being a decisive mother-of-the-bride, a role for which she is ill suited.  Not to mention it means the reappearance of Izzy’s father (and a couple of second families) in both their lives.  On a whim, Eve has dropped a short appreciative note to Jack, Jackson Cooper that is, the American author of a best-selling series of action-packed mystery novels.  His second wife has just left him (for another woman) and available single women are beginning to circle over him.  His fiftieth birthday looms.  Thus begins a correspondence between Eve and Jack about books and cooking that will change both of their lives.   Read it in one sitting.  228 pp.