Love à la Mode

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

November 27, 2018 · Disney Hyperion

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I recently described this book’s plot as a road with several roundabouts in a row, in which the story gets stuck before moving on. It’s the best description I can come up with to explain why this book frustrated me both in terms of plot development and character development.

The story opens with Rosie Radeke, a teenager from a small town in Ohio, on her first international flight to Paris. She’s been accepted into a French cooking academy run by a famous celebrity chef, Denis Laurent, and is understandably nervous and excited. Across the aisle from her is a dude named Henry Yi, and they figure out pretty quickly that they’re going to the same place, and that they’re both obsessed with food. Henry grew up in his father’s restaurant, and wants desperately to create a path for himself as a chef. Rosie is deeply dedicated to baking, and is still shocked she got into the program.

There are a few major themes of conflict that establish themselves right away:

1. Rosie isn’t as strong in the culinary requirements of cooking and as a result struggles each day with the lessons, weekly competitions between the students, and with the program in general. If she doesn’t progress sufficiently or isn’t learning enough, she’ll be asked to leave the program at the winter break.
2. Henry’s mother has contacted all the teachers and demanded that they give him extra work to make sure his academic studies are as rigorous as his culinary instruction. If he gets anything less than perfect grades, he has to leave.
3. Henry has it bad for Rosie, and has no idea what to do with his feelings, leading him to inhabit one plot roundabout for at least two-thirds of the book.
   1. He connects with Rosie over something, perhaps Coke or pastry or something else.
   2. They have a lovely time together as very close friends.
   3. Something Happens that Henry can’t handle – he doesn’t get a high enough grade on a test, his mother interferes again, he’s exhausted and short tempered from studying all the time, or he’s jealous of another student (more on him in a moment).
   4. Henry pushes Rosie away without ever clearly communicating with her, leading her to leave him alone because he’s being a jerk.
   5. Please proceed back to step 1 of this section.
   6. Go back to step 1 again.
   7. One more time around the roundabout?
   8. Sure, why not?
   9. You can see why this gets frustrating when reading.
4. Bodie Tal, another student, has a lot in common with Rosie – both are obsessive bakers, both delight in the chemical and procedural challenges of pastry, and both are struggling with the cooking vs baking instructional programs. Rosie likes Bodie, but she’s more awestruck by him – he’s a past winner of cooking competition shows, he’s somewhat famous (why he’s in this program is never really answered), he knows personally all the famous chefs that to Rosie (and the other students) are just pictures in magazines, and the founder of the school, Chef Laurent, is his godfather. (That’s probably why he got in, but why he’s there is confusing).

So we have a sort-of love triangle, a competitive environment of intense high-level skill demonstration on a weekly basis, plus academic rigor, all housed in a boarding school environment with students from different parts of the world, located in Paris. That’s a lot.

The problem is, the elements I was most interested in don’t show up. The plot spends a lot of time on Henry’s roundabout where he gets closer to Rosie and then pushes her away, but he doesn’t learn from that experience (all ninety-sixteen of them) until the very end, where there’s grand gestures and platitudes and long inspiring paragraphs that weren’t nearly satisfying enough. There isn’t enough actual instruction, no explanation of how the different students come up with their dishes – which sound extraordinary – and no real detail about what specifically they are learning in the culinary part of the program. There are some excellent meals described, but when they’re cooked by the students, there’s very little exploration of what or how they’re learning in order to create that dish. For a story about a culinary program for teens, there’s not a lot of culinary programming.

So much time is spent on Henry’s push/pull cycle and on Rosie’s struggle to find her confidence when most of the program is not her skill set (again, why is she there? Why is Bodie there, too?) that the academic and culinary progress of their training happens in fits and starts, and is inconsistently applied. That leads to truncated character development, as Henry doesn’t learn from his mistakes until the very end and Rosie has to stay in place trying to interpret why he’s incredibly kind and seems interested one moment, and is a grumpy asshole the next. It really, really bothered me how much time Rosie had to spend taking care of the students around her, especially Henry. She’s dealing with her own baggage, including homesickness, culture shock, the discouragement of repeated failure in the kitchen when she’s used to success, and more – but she’s still trying to care for everyone the way she cares for her brothers at home. That aspect of her personality is never addressed nor balanced by the end.

The plot itself sustains a higher tension and intensity that it doesn’t always earn and I read a lot of it feeling pretty tense. Will they both make it through the program? Will Rosie be asked to leave mid-way through (because this really isn’t the right program for her)? Will she fall for Bodie despite Henry’s intense yet never-expressed feelings? Will Henry fail under the increased academic pressure? Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Rosie was a character I wanted to like, and I did, but I was frustrated on her behalf by the ways in which she’s limited and not supported by the people and programs around her. She’s repeatedly set up to fail and flounder, and very little help is offered, except when Bodie, bless his heart, pulls some strings on her behalf. Henry doesn’t earn his ending emotionally, and I was very frustrated with his repeated immature behavior. Everyone around him leveled up, and his inability to get out of his own dumb cycle got tiresome. FINALLY he got it, but my gosh, the getting there was exhausting.

I did like how detailed the world was: real cooking competitions for adults and children on television were mentioned, as were real and famous chefs who inspired the individual characters. The group of students, especially Rosie’s friend group, are wonderfully and casually inclusive and come from all over the world. That part was was terrific – I loved their dialogue while they ate or explored or went out. They had a language, a collective experience, and a skillset in common that allowed them to form a cohesive and supportive friend group that by the end of the book made the story much more satisfying than the individual elements of Rosie and Henry’s romance. Rosie’s roommate Priya was one of my favorites; if this is a series, I’d read more about her in a heartbeat.

One of my favorite parts of the book also highlighted for me what was missing. Rosie decides to host a Thanksgiving meal, where all the students prepare and bring a food that represents “home” to the table and they eat together. It’s wonderful, and a heaping portion (forgive me) of food porn across many, many cultures. But that scene also contained the most food preparation detail, and the largest demonstration of culinary competence across a group of young people who are supposed to be incredibly talented. It was wonderful in the set-up, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the repetitive and shallow moments of tension that repeated unnecessarily up until that point.

I love stories where everyone is a fish out of water, and where everyone has something vital in common. I really wanted to like this book, but with Henry’s nonstop emotional roundabout, Rosie’s last-minute development and acknowledgement, and the lack of depth in the details, when I finished it, I was disappointed and unsatisfied.