When a cooking competition turns personal
A pair of chefs will feel the burn…
What’s the recipe for success? For single mom Karina Mistry, it’s the head-chef position she’s chased for years. But her boss has one more hoop for her to jump through. The new head chef will be chosen…via a reality cooking-show competition! Four weeks, eight meals, two competitors and everything on the line. Losing this job would be crushing. But losing to Chef Aneel Rawal, the man from her past she’s never forgiven? That’s not an option. It’s time for Karina to sharpen her knives, turn up the heat…and watch the tension simmer!
TW – alcoholism, death of parents
Dear Ms. Shroff,
I was psyched when I saw that this is a new addition to the “Once Upon a Wedding” Series. Newcomers need not fear starting here though. Some characters from previous books appear but in a way that serves the interest of this book rather than just pimping their own. Set in Baltimore, Maryland, many of these characters are associated with restaurant cooking and catering so make sure you aren’t hungry when you read as the (mainly, I think) Gujarati food will have you salivating.
Cooking contests are still important plot drivers in romance books and yes, there is one here but it manages to stay in the background. Karina and Aneel first met seven years ago when they were competing in another contest. Things started well but ended poorly when “technical difficulties” struck and ruined Karina’s entry in the final part. But she’s picked herself up, taken out a loan (that she wouldn’t have had to do had she won), had a child, and done everything at a restaurant to work her way to a deserved chef position. She heads to work thinking she’s going to get that before having that rug yanked out from under her.
Aneel won a culinary contest but needed to use the winning prize to keep himself and his younger sister afloat after the death of their mother. Alcoholic dad hasn’t been in their lives for years. After grabbing any chance to cook, be paid for it, and learn more, Aneel thinks he’s going to get the vacated chef job only to see a past rival up for it as well. Because guess what?! They’re going to compete on air, over four weeks for the job. WTH?
But okay, game on.
Karina immediately arrows straight back to the fouled previous contest and begins making insinuations with a lot of anger obviously still boiling in her. Aneel wants to move past that and focus on now but initially Karina makes tensions feel ugly on the set. Still it gives them a plot reason to be enemies. Except that things then simmer down a lot until tension is needed which requires Karina to bring this up again. Until she then needs help and Aneel offers it after which, more than once, she snarks about the issue. I felt like saying, if you’re going to accept Aneel’s help, then pipe down about the past contest. If you can’t do that, then don’t let him help you. One good thing about this in terms of their relationship is that eventually Karina and Aneel deal with it before the truth comes out.
Aneel and Karina are both talented chefs and ready to take over the helm of the restaurant. Though they have different styles of management, both Karina and Aneel treat the line staff with respect. The owner is a dick but a head chef job is a pretty big deal. Honestly, I’d be hesitant to work for this guy given how many strings he pulls and changes he makes but maybe that’s how restaurants are.
Before long they both discover that they have a lot in common. Karina’s husband bailed on her before the birth of their son, Veer, who is an absolute, utter darling. I’m not a plot moppet fan and Veer is never that. Karina’s family are also top notch and all are devoted to each other. The thread of who is the best Marvel character or movie hilariously weaves through the story. I laughed out loud at Karina’s horror that Veer is never going to be too old to engage in debates about any of this.
Aneel’s father was a fall-down drunk who his mother threw out of the house after years of begging the man to shape up and trying to get him help. His mother helped him learn to cook but her early death left Aneel in charge of raising his younger sister. Now the man wants to explain his side and Aneel wants none of it for him or his sister. Important lessons in new boundaries with Saira regarding this are hard won over the course of the story. Aneel watching Karina deal with Veer’s father wanting back in their lives as well as learning that she also lost her mother too early also brings them together.
As I said, food permeates the book. There’s the chef contest as well as some catering gigs that Karina takes on for extra cash which also, she realizes, allow her creativity to run free and gives her more important free time to spend with Veer – beyond watching “Captain America.” The food allows some past characters a little page time and gives us a nice update on them. One thing that Karina is desperate to do is recreate her mother’s masala recipe with a secret ingredient which Karina never got before her mother’s tragic death. As Aneel’s specialty is deconstructing food, they spend a lot of bonding time on this. Her father’s revelation that his wife grew up in Uganda brings in a bit of the past Indian diaspora. I like how this quest ends but I won’t reveal if the secret recipe is cracked.
The characters in the book seem real to me: making mistakes at times, allowing emotions to overwhelm them, jumping to a few conclusions. Some past relationship wrinkles are never going to be ironed out but people can turn out to be better than a lot of tertiary romance characters have been allowed to be in the past. There’s believable nuance here even if Karina initially harping on the old conflict between them at weird times annoyed me. I’m glad the truth about it came out in the end, happy paths forward appear, family remains vital, and there are several new characters waiting to step into MC roles. B+
~Jayne
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Jayne
Another long time reader who read romance novels in her teens, then took a long break before started back again about 25 years ago. She enjoys historical romance/fiction best, likes contemporaries, action- adventure and mysteries, will read suspense if there’s no TSTL characters and is currently reading more fantasy and SciFi.
