Kate Jenkins doesn’t believe in fate. She believes in a clear vision, meticulous planning, and hard work in order to achieve her culinary dreams. On the cusp of opening her own Parisian restaurant, Bistro Exotique, she isn’t even concerned when her standoffish—and annoyingly sexy—neighbor dismisses her as a crazy American tourist or when she meets the wildly eccentric Garrance, the self-proclaimed Spice Master of Paris, who ominously warns her of the previous owner’s failures.
Confident and optimistic, Kate keeps calm and cooks on. Until a series of unfortunate events derail her plans and her entire staff quits.
Kate is about to throw in the kitchen towel on her lifelong dream when Garrance offers to use her mastery of scents and spices to help her, but it comes at a Kate must work with Garrance’s son, Charles, a world-class chef and total jerk. After Kate hesitantly concedes to the deal, she slowly learns to open her heart and mind to new concepts, not quite sure if the magic she’s experiencing comes from Garrance’s spices, from within herself, or from the growing chemistry with Charles. One thing is certain, her kitchen is getting increasingly hot.
Comment: I got interested in this book because of the suggestion of two chefs at odds who would need to work together, the reference to some "magical realism" and the fact it would include the Paris setting.
When I saw the blurb for this book, I was immediately interested... some of the words used made me think about other books with the ideas I thought I'd find here (such as the cooking aspect, the animosity turning to caring, the magical realism) but then I saw the average on GR and I was a little doubtful. It's true that the number of reviews isn't high but still... nevertheless I decided to give it a try because what didn't work for others might work for me.
Well, at first I was charmed by Kate's personality and quirkiness and also by her eagerness to succeed, to have her own place after years training and working for someone else. Although the tone felt a bit on the "light" side, I wasn't too worried and not even the fact this is first person narrator was upsetting me, which usually does, because Kate felt like a funny and silly girl in the good sense of the word. I had also read other books with these elements and some had worked, so I expected that here too.
Sadly, I must bow to the majority for as things developed, I started to feel this had less quirkiness and more annoyance and some situations just started to disappoint. Although most of the elements here were also predictable, still expected them to be presented in a fresh or at least charming way and I feel the author highlighted the elements in such a way that instead of seeing as cute, they started to feel more like ill placed cliches. In general, I can't say the writing is all bad, but the execution could have been so much better.
From a certain point on, things started to feel very juvenile, for instance the way the relationship between Kate and Charles was developed felt as if we were talking about teenagers and not grown ups. Kate is rather innocent and a bit naive and this can be seen as just part of her personality, after all not everyone is always confident or might not be in all areas, but I think this could have been done better if the narrator hadn't been her. I just can't understand how Kate could be made to behave in weird ways here and there and we could see accept these details as realistic. Or the narrator should be different or Kate's voice should be more mature. While quirkiness worked at first, I soon got tired of the juvenile style.
The story had cute scenes, it's true but the development started to feel a bit cringe and had many situations which weren't really necessary to have happened that way. For instance, Garrance offers Kate her help but with limitations. These two have not know each other for that long, and Garrance didn't come across as one of those adorable grannies who "know best". Even the magical realism content, which I assumed would be low key anyway, felt like a simple add-on, because Kate experiences visions or something when she eats food with the spices but this didn't feel organic, not to her cooking, nor to the story and an element I expected to be sweet, wasn't that interesting.
Another element I liked less and less as the story progressed was the romance. At first they are at odds with one another, then slowly get to become co workers and kind of friends. This section worked for me, but from the moment they start to fall in love, it's like their personalities changed and I wasn't that fond of who they were when they weren't playing the enemies to lovers game. Kate is a naive and inexperienced woman and she acts accordingly but sometimes that got on my nerves. Charles was this alpha type man and then at some point he was acting stupid over miscommunication.
It still amazes me how, in romances, author still make the characters act in ways to - supposedly - advance the plot or the tension between couples by making them do stuff and then have to apologize or whatever, how childish is this, why not bet more on consistency? So they take their time to go from being enemies to being in love, there is a lot of indecision between all this, and a lot of delayed intimacy which ended up in...nothing. I don't mind if a romance is closed door or a so-called "clean" label, but to set up the potential for the whole book, stressing out why Kate feels insecure and not ready, to show them finally there and then the paragraph ends and we have an epilogue where they are simply happy.... why give so much importance to a subject that has no closure to the reader?
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