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Have you ever been beset with the unusual desire to read a season of MasterChef? Probably...not. But, maybe reality TV is what's missing from the romance novel game. Follow our female lead as she tries to win in knock-off MasterChef, all while beset with an unfortunate attraction to one of the judges.
It took me two days to read this book.
Two days, with my (probably) ADHD-addled brain, and the book's about 320 pages. So, clearly something has been done right.
The prose in this story lacks confidence. Not in the sense that the characters or plot aren't fully realized; it's more like Elliot struggled with putting what she wanted on the page in the moment-to-moment. In particular, the analogies are undercut by qualifiers and awkward wordings. Like when "a cloud passed over his figurative sun" (21), or "those imaginary spines along my back bristled again" (147). Lines like these theoretically would work to support the surrounding content, but Elliot seems to have started to write metaphors here, only to chicken out at the last second. It tells me that she has either a lack of faith in herself or in her audience. A lack of faith in the audience leads to readers feeling like they're being talked down to.
I could harp further on awkward analogies--the food similes that pop up sporadically make it sound like our first person narrator suddenly remembered that she's a chef--but the biggest microcosm of the lack of confidence shows up on page 45. A girl named Kaitlyn has just showed up; we've been introduced to her earlier in the book as an acquaintance that our protagonist isn't particularly fond of. The prose leads us into knowing who it is, dropping a line about cigarettes, which is the defining trait of Kaitlyn (we'll talk about that later), and then... a whole line, in its own paragraph, of a long italicized arghhhhhhh, give or take a few Hs. What is this line doing? Does it add to the moment? We, as an audience, already know how our protagonist is going to feel about seeing Kaitlyn. Shouldn't that argh be supplied by the reader himself? I feel like Elliot should have had faith in her audience to know how much of an argh moment this was, without her help.
My other major peeve with this story is its tokenism. Granted, of course, the nature of reality TV--even just emulating reality TV--is that there will be tokens. There's some lampshading of this in the Joes, who are nicknamed thus: Vanilla Joe, Bald Joe, Kangaroo Joe, and Old Joe. Rather than being a bit, these are the full, capitalized names that will be used to refer to these characters in the prose for the rest of the book. This kind of reduction of people to simple traits is present for a lot of characters; Kaitlyn is a smoker, so you're constantly reminded while she's on the page that she smells of smoke or has yellow teeth or something of the sort; Vanilla Joe is on the big side, and is described as paunchy whenever available; another character, Kel--a nonbinary character, which I'm happy to see!--has a lot of piercings, and you will know that they glint in the light every time they show up. It's a little tiresome when a diverse cast has so many characters being made into single features like this, and at times, it makes the protagonist, being our perspective character, come across as a little shallow.
Sadie's shallowness is something I found myself wrestling with for a lot of the book. While she kind of gets over it towards the end of the book, learning to be more charitable towards people she'd sworn as enemies, like Vanilla Joe and Kaitlyn, it doesn't feel like it's ever unpacked just how much she looks down on people in her head. There are those constant asides about Kaitlyn's smoking, as well as moments like this, on page 126:
Vanilla Joe stretched out on his lounger, folding his hands on his round belly. From this angle, it was evident how far his hairline was receeding.
And, yeah, I guess the guy is framed as a bit of a douche for a lot of the book, but I don't know what his appearance has to do with any of it. Maybe this was meant to be plain description, but it comes out of nowhere, and it isn't the first time that Sadie thinks about this guy in a needlessly uncharitable way. He's really a low-grade, passively conservative white guy at worst, so I don't know if he earns the role that the author gives him as punching bag. If Elliot wanted someone to be detestable, she could have very well made someone much more worth hating.
To add to Sadie's seeming shallowness, she's quick to think about her love interest as little more than a really pretty looking guy. She's a little horny, too:
He raised an eyebrow, obviously amused. That tiny gesture made something hot tweak below my stomach. Down, girl (166)
...and I don't bemoan that by any means, but there's not a lot else there. They talk about food a lot, yes, about how he wants to have a career making real, authentic food, not fancy rich people stuff. It's the only thing they talk about, though, and when they're not talking, Sadie's thinking about how much she wants to pork him. Needless to say, I don't think that the chemistry is really there. It doesn't much need to be, though, because the romance isn't really where this book shines.
You tell me! Do you see MasterChef playing on the Hallmark channel?
It's certainly aimed at the same type of audience, though, so it's not completely unfounded. In this case, I think that the reality TV element of the story works to supplement a Hallmark-ish plot into being much more appealing for a long-term read. The truth is that the classic Hallmark movie stories are pretty bare bones (take a look at some of the weaker ones and note how much time is spent on shots and dialogue exchanges that don't further the plot), so trying to build a whole novel around one is a daunting task indeed. And the bones of a simple, trope-filled plot are definitely there, to the point that we have an exchange near the end that is a straight up "I'm not giving up my dreams, dad; I'm giving up your dreams!" kind of deal. But that plot is secondary to the MasterChef season going on center stage, and the two plots work to constantly advance one another.
The love in this story lies in the food--or rather, in the Food Network reality TV chunks that we experience from Sadie's perspective. It's so clear that Amanda Elliot has spent many a night churning through seasons of MasterChef, heartfully invested, riding all the highs and lows, taking notes on dishes that sound exciting. It shows in the action-oriented challenge scenes. Sadie is applying her whole self whenever she's behind the counter, and she thinks about food in a way that will have you thinking huh, that's really clever, just like you would watching an actual Food Network show.
My pen hit the paper. My protein was salmon. I closed my eyes, thinking back to--lox. Smoked salmon we often ate on bagels. My eyes popped open. I didn't have bagels, or ingredients for bagels, but I did have rice. What if I ground some of the rice to make a crispy cut on the salmon, then smoked the salmon in a play on lox? The seaweed had the same briny notes as capers, and I could pickle these radishes the way I'd pickle red onions... (67-8)
Sadie's ingenuity in the kitchen is captivating, and it's a big reason as to why I finished the book in two days. It was just like binging an actual season of MasterChef; I wanted to see who would get kicked off, who would come up with the cleverest idea, how things would go wrong. And Elliot definitely understands what sorts of dramatic shifts and challenges make for a great few episodes of MasterChef. The stakes are high, and the cook-offs are immersive. If I wasn't turning the pages for the main relationship, I sure as hell was turning them to get to the next batch of cookery. So, no, maybe it wasn't exactly like a Hallmark movie--I'd certainly expected it to be, considering how many of them are food-related--but it captured a whole other kind of comfort viewing, and for that, it should be applauded.
This was a delight to read, and a really easy read, in case you couldn't tell from the fact that I read it in two days! If you want to scratch a Hallmark itch, consider flipping the channel over to Food Network for a little bit so that you can savor this charming little book. It's far from perfect, but we aren't looking for perfection on this journey by a long shot. However, let the fact that the romance is only the subject of, like, one paragraph in this review act as a warning: if you're here for a romance, you might not be satisfied with this one. The joy of this story lies in its trappings, not in its relationships.