Love’s Recipe
by Mila Nicks
Content warning: Manipulative / borderline abusive families; heroine was married at 17 to a man in his mid-twenties and that relationship was also manipulative and possibly more than borderline abusive, though we see very little of it on the page.
This is a fun, gentle romance that will make you hungry. Rosalie is a young, recently divorced, single mother who returns home to live with her own mother because she is out of options, and takes a job at Ady’s Creole Café, working as a waitress. There she meets Nick, Ady’s son, a single father and the owner of the café, who is still grieving the loss of his mother. Unfortunately, his grief takes the form of letting the café slowly go under, as he can no longer bear to cook there. Rosalie is not having this – she needs the waitressing job to have an income that gives her independence from her controlling mother. Somehow, she winds up persuading Nick to turn things around, which leads to a lot of cooking lessons and a lot of kissing in the kitchen.
Look, if you write a story in which the characters spend most of their time cooking delicious food that you can practically smell from the page, you are pretty much going to get my vote regardless of whatever else happens in the story. I found Rosalie’s relationship with her mother hard to read, but fortunately, there was gumbo and double choc chip pancakes and red beans and rice and cheesy pasta and banana bread pudding and did I mention that this book will make you HUNGRY? It’s like a whole book of comfort food. We even have Rosalie regaining her confidence through cooking! Because food makes everything better, and feeding people is love (says the girl who is half Italian and a quarter Jewish and is thus genetically and culturally programmed to feed everyone, all the time).
The relationship between Rosalie and Nick was sweet enough, but really, I was perfectly happy being instructed on how to properly sauté shrimp. And I don’t even like seafood.
The conflicts which dominate the book wind up being resolved incredibly easily. With the external ones, suddenly the various antagonists decide to have a change of heart, and the problems just melt away. There is some internal conflict too, but then Rosalie and Nick realise that, actually, they haven’t been communicating well and both behaved a bit badly, and so they say sorry, resolve to do better, and move on.
This is restful to read, but it did mean that the tension in the book dropped abruptly in the last few chapters, so that they began to feel like an extended epilogue. With pie. And more banana bread pudding.
I need to go bake something now, but in the meantime, I’m giving this book a B. For baking.
Can two strangers down on their luck discover the flavor of love?
Rosalie Underwood is a broke, recently divorced single mother. After she’s forced to return to her hometown St. Aster, Louisiana, she lands a waitressing job at Ady’s Creole Café. Life’s not done giving her lemons just yet, though. Ady’s Creole Café is on the brink of going out of business. If Rosalie hopes to recover from her disastrous marriage and keep her job, she must figure out a way to save the restaurant. But the only question is how?
When Nicholas Fontaine hires Rosalie Underwood, he doesn’t expect his newest waitress to stir the pot. He was hoping to keep up the charade he’s created since his mother’s passing. Soon he realizes that Rosalie refuses to let Ady’s fail. She cooks up a plan to salvage the business—including the part where she enters the restaurant in a food competition to generate town-wide buzz.
There’s no time for butting heads. The clock is ticking and the business is tanking. Nick’s stuck teaching Rosalie how to cook the one-of-a-kind menu. Rosalie’s trying her best to learn the delicious recipes. In order to succeed, they must come together and work as a team, but brewing feelings between them only complicates matters. Is this a recipe for disaster or a recipe for love?
Contemporary Romance, Romance
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
