B-
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Novella, Romance
Theme: Forced Proximity (stranded, safehouse, etc), Holiday
Archetype: Chef/Foodie/Bartender, Diverse Protagonists
The best part of Mangos & Mistletoe is the mouthwatering descriptions of pastries created in a GBBO-inspired holiday baking competition set in Scotland. The worst part of Mangos & Mistletoe is the mouthwatering descriptions of pastries created in a GBBO-inspired holiday baking competition set in Scotland. Do not repeat my mistakes: you must not read this f/f enemies-to-lovers-in-only-one-bed novella without a plate of delicious pastries nearby.
My baking experience is limited to an almost burned attempt of shortbread and I’ve never been more sorry for it. Hot chocolate rugelach with marshmallow nougat, key lime and coconut shortbread casitas with intricate piping, mentions of tropical fruits like guavas and mangos… If your salivary glands are already watering, here’s my recommended plan-of-action:
- Stop reading this review (okay, I don’t mean this literally. Just read fast because time is ticking).
- Close your electronic device (unless you’re reading SBTB on a clay tablet, in which case you should close that instead).
- Run to the nearest grocery store or bakery to stock up on baked goods/ingredients. I recommend something not very sticky as your wandering fingers may leave marks on the e-reader screen.
- Stretch your one-click fingers and visit your favorite retailer. Then one-click!
- Read Mangos & Mistletoe while munching on your sweet delicacies.
- Send me a plate of leftover pastries and a thank-you letter to praise my plan-of-action (just kidding. We all know there would be no leftovers from an intensive reading/eating session).
Over two-hundred words and I’ve yet to describe the heroines and setting in detail. Here’s a quick breakdown in bullet points:
- The setting: a holiday baking competition in a snowy Scottish castle.
- The accommodations: a hotel with a shortage of beds (this screwup is 100% on the production company, but I’m inclined to forgive them because Only-One-Bed is the greatest manifestation of forced proximity).
- Our heroine Kiskeya Burgos: Dominicana raised in the DR. Californian. She will do anything it takes to win. There will be NO DISTRACTIONS, you hear me? She’s not Here To Make Friends (The Bachelor™). No small-talk, no kisses, no helping hands, no anything. Hang on, who’s this new contestant? Wait a minute… Oh no.
Before I nodded woodenly and hopefully said something that didn’t make me sound like a complete and utter dolt, I had one last fleeting thought.
Kiskeya Burgos, your distraction is Dominican.
- Our heroine Sully Morales: Dominicana raised in the USA. New Yorker. Proud to blare her cultural heritage via a megaphone (if unavailable, her baking will do). Snarky as hell. The concept of “mouth or brain filter” does not exist in her vocabulary.
“Your face is going to get stuck like that.” I was a brat. So the fuck what?
- A recipe for love (or maybe disaster): An assigned partnership for the entirety of the competition. They have to collaborate; either they win together or they lose together. And with the sparks (lustful and angry) floating around the kitchen, they better hope that it isn’t one ingredient too many for the baking process.
To Sully’s bewilderment, Kiskeya continuously rejects any culinary ideas that connect baking masterpieces to their cultural heritage. No guavas, no tropical flavors tied to Caribbean cuisine, no “over-the-top Dominican” style. Since she assumed the partnership would find common ground over shared cultural roots, Sully feels hurt over Kiskeya’s rejection. “Over-the-top Dominican” style is who Sully is, and she isn’t going to change for some infuriating-yet-sexy baking partner.
I don’t want to reveal Kiskeya’s reasoning since her reveal tugged at my heartstrings. I was impressed by the story’s acknowledgement of immigrant experiences not being monolith. How one Dominicana chooses to express their roots isn’t necessarily the same as another Dominicana; one method isn’t “better” than the other. There exists a multitude of opinions that live within a diaspora; to brush everyone with the same characteristics is a gross oversimplification and erases diversity within the group. It’s possible to feel good and bad things about your homeland, and sometimes the latter overpowers the former. I adored this subplot; it feels like such a realistic conflict that the heroines would butt heads over. I was similarly impressed by the discussion of the heroines’ sexual preferences within the cultural context. Any subplot related to their Dominican cultural heritage is pitch perfect.
I also liked the execution of the Only One Bed trope. Sometimes that trope is limited to one night and the MCs act on sexual tension right away. Here, the Only One Bed is present for multiple nights. While this drives the reader wild with anticipation, it makes the sexual payoff so much sweeter. In general, I thought the forced proximity was very well done. There is no escape! Sully and Kiskeya bicker and bake during the daytime, ramping up the animosity and sexual chemistry. By night, they’re so keyed up on emotion and there’s still no escape. It’s no wonder that I let out a sigh of immense relief during the first sex scene. The unrelenting forced proximity builds up to the confession of romantic attraction, and it’s so satisfying for the MCs to succumb to their secret desires.
If I enjoyed the story, what irked me enough to downgrade my rating to a B-? I watch a lot of culinary reality television and have some insight into behind-the-scenes operations. In Mangos & Mistletoe, a competition-related conflict is responsible for the black moment. Without entering spoiler-territory, I’ll just say that the black moment rests on a plot contrivance that seems unlikely at best and impossible at worst.
With the exception of a “surprise” bake, the production staff assigns baking parameters a full day before filming (two prepared bakes, one surprise bake for filming). For one of the challenges, the contestants have an entire day to practice their prepared bakes. The filming occurs the following day.
- The contestants have studio kitchen access to practice. Sully and Kieskya brainstorm and attempt their bakes. One of their bakes (the book’s equivalent of GBBO’s showstopper) has an Exciting Creative Technique that is sure to wow the judges.
- All the contestants are working in the same studio kitchen, which has been subdivided by a temporary wall. Contestants can’t peek or be influenced by another team’s ideas.
- At the end of the day, the heroines accidentally leave a paper copy of their design ideas in the kitchen.
- The next day, during the filming of the challenge, the host goes up to Rival Team (who has already started to bake) and asks about their design. Rival Team says, “We’re doing Exciting Creative Technique!”
- Panic, anger, oh-my-god-what-do-we-do-now. It is obvious that Rival Team stole the paper from the previous night. Sully and Kieskya abandon Exciting Creative Technique because they don’t want to be accused of copying the rivals’ “idea.”
In order for this scenario to work, the production staff has to be completely ignorant of the contestants’ design plans until literally the moment of filming. This makes zero sense. The contestants are in the studio kitchen for Practice Bake Day. Are you seriously telling me that the kitchen is empty of production staff all day? It’s a liability issue; you don’t let your contestants enter the kitchen without cameras or production staff. What if there’s an accident or an altercation in the kitchen? The show is responsible for the safety of their contestants. If they’re working on a product for the show (and practice bakes definitely count), then the contestants shouldn’t have been left alone for Practice Bake Day. And if they weren’t left alone, then surely the production staff would’ve seen the practice bakes and known the designs prior to filming.
Let’s assume that no production staff is present in the studio kitchen during Practice Bake Day (the text doesn’t say one way or the other). The staff’s ignorance still doesn’t make much sense. Show employees are intimately involved in every part of the competition process; this includes preparing for talking points (so the host can ask bake-related questions during filming) or stocking up on 3x the necessary ingredients in case of a baking mishap. Their role isn’t to just turn the video camera on and off. There are all sorts of details that go into producing a baking competition. I find it hard to believe that the host would only learn about baking designs during filming (especially as ideas were finalized the day before).
It is possible that the production staff in Mangos & Mistletoe is seriously incompetent, thus allowing the creative theft to occur. That doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it. I love culinary reality television; one of my hopes was that the behind-the-scenes details would accurately reflect the fascinating-if-complicated logistics of production. You may think that my nitpicking is extreme, but this mishap is the catalyst for the black moment. All hell breaks loose. The entirety of the panicked aftermath, I was irritated because it shouldn’t have been occurring in the first place. It’s a contrived and ill-explained conflict that takes away from the emotional arc of an otherwise delightful romance.
Second, my #1 novella complaint is that I often feel short-changed by the grovel/aftermath of the black moment. I have that same complaint here; the on-page groveling is short and insufficient. For the level of “crime” committed by one of the MCs, I need more grovelling after the black moment in order to be satisfied. YMMV on this count, since my opinion re: grovelling can be summed up as “there can never be too much.” As a result, I was vaguely dissatisfied at the end.
Despite my frustrations with the black moment at the end, I still recommend Mangos & Mistletoe to any reader intrigued by the enemies-to-lovers and GBBO-inspired premise. It’s so freaking fun. Even the nitpicks that irked me aren’t going to change that fact. I might’ve been annoyed by the plot contrivance that made the conflict fall apart the more I thought about it, but I was equally happy thinking about Kiskeya and Sully, their bakes, and their swoonworthy romance. It wasn’t a perfect read for me, but Mangos & Mistletoe is the perfect read for when you find a moment of rest during holiday chaos.
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Thanks!
Ooh, this sounds like fun!
This one sounds fun! Im intrigued by the GBBO setup. I totally get why the spoilery nitpick would bother you, but I guess its not nearly so aggravating when you already know what’s coming. (One of the reasons I couldn’t love the “Kiss quotient” as much as others was that THAT’S NOT HOW SEWING WORKS!!! The idea of someone making an expensive dress – made to measure, no less – without any more measuring than having had sex just… made me so mad! Also: there are lots of techniques to finish seams. They are NOT just called “non French seams”, and someone like Stella would know that! Sorry for the rant… Just to say that these things do matter, especially if you picked up a book because it matched your interests!)
The novella length may be more of a downer for me. I never seem to be satisfied with them…
As always, thanks for your wonderful review!
I might try this one. I want to love Adriana Herrara because of her unique perspective, but her full length books (I’ve read 2) don’t wow me – they seem too short on conflict so it becomes repetitive, rather than amping up. A shorter length work of hers might solve that issue for me.