Title: Love’s Recipe
Author: Mila Nicks
Publication Date: May 1, 2020
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Number of Pages: 241
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?”
Rosalie Underwood is a hard-working, single mother, who has reluctantly moved back to her hometown after her marriage ended in disaster. Nicholas Fontaine is the grief-stricken, single father, and new owner of failing Ady’s Creole Café. When Rosalie walks into Ady’s and asks for a job, Nick hires her on the spot, not knowing that she was going to turn his life and the café around.
I found this book to be cute, cliché, and frustrating. I liked the two main characters, and I thought that they brought out the best in each other. I liked how hard-working and determined Rosalie was, and I loved her relationship with her daughter Remi. I liked Nick, and I felt bad for him because people were calling him lazy when in actuality, he was struggling to process his grief. I also loved Nick’s relationship with his daughter Maxie, and I loved the moments featuring just the two of them. I loved Remi and Maxie’s relationship, and I’m glad that these two little girls found each other and were able to balance each other out.
One thing that frustrated me about this book is that the timeline didn’t make sense. The entire book takes place over a span of a few months, and in my opinion, too much happened during those few months. I think it’s great that Nick and Rosalie were able to get Ady’s back on its feet again, but I couldn’t wrap my head around that much progress being made in such a short amount of time. I also had a difficult time believing that Rosalie went from making spaghetti from a jar to being able to work side by side with a professionally trained chef and churning out an award-winning menu in a matter of weeks.
This brings me to my favourite part of the book, which was all the food. I love food and books with descriptions of food usually make me hungry and happy. Some of the dishes like cheesy shrimp with grits, gumbo, and cheesy creole pasta sounded delicious, and I wish I could eat what they were making. I also loved the Autumn festival, because the thought of being surrounded by falling leaves, delicious smelling food, and autumn treats made me happy, especially since I’ve barely left the house in seven weeks.
There were a few other things that annoyed me about this book, including how quickly the conflict was resolved. This book features the classic characters fail to communicate, and then they have a fight scene, and then they talked, and everything was resolved shortly after that. I was also annoyed with some of the language used when the characters were getting intimate. I’m not a writer, and I have to imagine that writing sex scenes is incredibly difficult, but there must be better language choices than the ones that were used in this book. I was also slightly annoyed with how many clichés were in this book, I love clichés, but it felt like this book had too many of them.
Overall, I liked this book. I thought it was cute, and I liked the relationship between the main characters. I especially liked all the food featured in this book, and I enjoyed the relationship between Remi and Maxie. If you’re looking for something cute and quick to read, I recommend checking this book out.
Rating: 3 Stars!