This HaBO comes from Nusaybah, who really wants to find this book:
This is what I can remember about the book:
It was a college, sports romance.
The heroine has a crush on her brother’s teammate and steals his number from her brother. She sends the hero quotes and motivational messages but never gets a response until she mistakenly sends a rant message intended for her best friend about pineapple on pizza.
I also remember a scene where her brothers force her to eat takoyaki.
Please if this rings any bells, share the name of the book. THANK YOU!
Personally, I’m team pineapple on pizza.
I am not sure of the title, but it might be one of the books in the next gen Pucked series by Helena Hunting.
Just looked it up – could it be A Favor for a Favor by Helena Hunting?
Hmmm, “forced to eat takoyaki”… Does not inspire confidence in the sensitivity of the author.
For context, I tried to read one Helena Hunting and the slut-shaming was so aggressive I DNFed 10 pages in, so possibly I am extrapolating additional bad behavior.
Pineapple on pizza was a running joke in certain old fan fics and I think I may have read it in one of Rob Thurman’s novels. Those books were a lot of fun.
Forced? Takoyaki’s delicious!
I had to look it up. Fom Wikipedia “Takoyaki is a ball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special molded pan. It is typically filled with minced or diced octopus, tempura scraps, pickled ginger, and green onion.”
If takoyaki is “typically filled with minced or diced octopus” it would absolutely trigger my gag reflex. I can barely manage calamari and the inadvertent ingestion of squid tentacles would definitely lead to some urping. This has nothing to do with the food in question, but rather my head space and tolerance for unusual foods.
My in-laws were big fans of horsemeat which has or had a considerable following in France. I, on the other hand, was all ick-ick-ick. Again, nothing to do with the intrinsic flavor or rightness of the food, but literally, all in my head. Still, when Pep got me to unknowingly try a “summer sausage” sourced from Old Dobbin, I did not appreciate it either as a new taste sensation or a joke. However, that was the 70s, and I’ve since grown a sense of humor.
Anyway, my point is that food tastes are the very essence of ymmv (which only resembles yum on the surface) and may not necessarily signal a lack of sensitivity.
Slut-shaming, on the other hand, is definitely a problem and one very common to the author in question.
So I went ahead and downloaded the title LJO suggested and there are feelings about pineapples and olives on pizza, but no takoyaki – so Ms. Hunting is absolved of this particular sin.
But there is a long tradition of westerners treating what are perfectly ordinary foods in other cultures with disgust, particularly Asian foods (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/dining/james-corden-asian-food.html). That’s the context in which I would have concerns about a plot point, “forced to eat takoyaki”.
I also think pranks and dares involving physical discomfort are profoundly violating, so as stated wisely above, OMMV.