Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Washington County Cooperative Library Services.
Sarah1984
Nov 04, 2012Sarah1984 rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
24/09 - I'll come back and edit this into a more concise review once I finish the book, but after reading a few chapters I wanted to get my thoughts down before I forgot what they were. I love cooking and I love cooking shows, both American and British, but mostly British. The cooking competition seems to be Top Chef under another name with familiar sounding teams, challenges, running around a supermarket and lots of idiotic backstabbing and clique-forming. The early scenes between Danny's team and the Limestone team were annoying because I find it hard to believe a chef would purposefully attempt to cause another chef to dump a stock pot of boiling stock on themselves (something which would severely injure, possibly even kill them) just to disturb a third chef's equilibrium, and all while being filmed (I might be naive to think this, but that's me tending to think the best of people). A few pages later I was once again annoyed by what I think is a VERY fake reaction by Danny when he sees Eva's penthouse apartment, especially the kitchen. What, he's never seen a renovation show, never seen a movie, never seen a cooking show even? That just doesn't ring true for me, not for someone living in the modern age. His reaction reminds me of a Dickens-like American orphan, standing in the foyer of some grand hotel, craning his neck to look at the ceiling and saying "Wowee. In't dis sumthin'?" 4/4 - So yeah, didn't really like this romance (if that's what you'd call it). Eva, the heroine, didn't engender any empathy, sympathy or general good feelings towards her. She was way too aggressive, way too forward, it just didn't ring true. There was no seduction by either of them, she annoyed him by holding a plane up, she tried to placate the plane load of people with mojitos, they met in an elevator and furious groping ensued. I thought maybe Edwards was attempting to bring the romance novel into the 21st century, giving the two leads more up-to-date attitudes to sex and relationships, but that just pushed the romance right out of the story, leaving it as more of a wham-bam-thank-you-mam novel, no romance necessary.