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julies_reading 's review for:
A Taste for Love
by Jennifer Yen
Note: Not sure whether I'll be giving this 3 or 4 stars, so proper rating to come!
Liza Yang dreams of baking like her mother, who runs a bakery and a successful annual high school baking competition based on The Great British Bake Off. However, her Taiwanese parents want her to focus on school and get a solid career - and a nice Asian man - to support her. When Liza decides she wants to enter her mother's competition, they compromise and Liza is given a judging competition. Little does she know, however, that this is a ploy for her mother to set her up with a bunch of mom-approved Asian boys for her to date.
This was a really cute and fun read for me to breeze through quickly after slogging through my last read. I had to pick this up because it combined two of my favorite things - GBBO and Pride and Prejudice. I know that I've been learning that YA contemporary/romances no longer float my boat as much as they used to, so I decided to give it the genre one last try with a story that seemed made for me (excusing the fact that I'm white). I love the relationship we see between Liza and her mother; it's tense at times, but you can tell they really care about each other and only want what's best. I loved the love for baking that came right off the page. I'm a big baker myself, so that really worked for me. I enjoyed myself at every point of reading this; the writing style was very smooth and made turning the pages fast. I thought the translations of Mrs. Bennett, Elizabeth, and Jane were well done (Lydia wasn't half bad either). Liza's wit had me mentally high-fiving her throughout the whole book.
However, I did have a few issues that mainly came down to plotting/pacing. The baking competition doesn't start until halfway through the book. It's obvious by then that it's not going to last nearly as long as is planned. Then all of the "plot" stuff (mainly the stuff that makes it a P&P retelling) came about within a few pages of each other. I definitely feel like both the baking and P&P plots could have been more spread out. Because of this, the Elizabeth/Darcy dynamic was a little different, which wasn't a bad thing, just different. I do think that the Darcy character was a bit of a MPDB; I feel like I know nothing about him more than he's stoic, hot, and bakes. Which like, I guess you could do worse!
Overall, this was just what I needed after a read that almost sent me into a slump. I'd definitely recommend this highly to fans of YA contemporaries and P&P!
Liza Yang dreams of baking like her mother, who runs a bakery and a successful annual high school baking competition based on The Great British Bake Off. However, her Taiwanese parents want her to focus on school and get a solid career - and a nice Asian man - to support her. When Liza decides she wants to enter her mother's competition, they compromise and Liza is given a judging competition. Little does she know, however, that this is a ploy for her mother to set her up with a bunch of mom-approved Asian boys for her to date.
This was a really cute and fun read for me to breeze through quickly after slogging through my last read. I had to pick this up because it combined two of my favorite things - GBBO and Pride and Prejudice. I know that I've been learning that YA contemporary/romances no longer float my boat as much as they used to, so I decided to give it the genre one last try with a story that seemed made for me (excusing the fact that I'm white). I love the relationship we see between Liza and her mother; it's tense at times, but you can tell they really care about each other and only want what's best. I loved the love for baking that came right off the page. I'm a big baker myself, so that really worked for me. I enjoyed myself at every point of reading this; the writing style was very smooth and made turning the pages fast. I thought the translations of Mrs. Bennett, Elizabeth, and Jane were well done (Lydia wasn't half bad either). Liza's wit had me mentally high-fiving her throughout the whole book.
However, I did have a few issues that mainly came down to plotting/pacing. The baking competition doesn't start until halfway through the book. It's obvious by then that it's not going to last nearly as long as is planned. Then all of the "plot" stuff (mainly the stuff that makes it a P&P retelling) came about within a few pages of each other. I definitely feel like both the baking and P&P plots could have been more spread out. Because of this, the Elizabeth/Darcy dynamic was a little different, which wasn't a bad thing, just different. I do think that the Darcy character was a bit of a MPDB; I feel like I know nothing about him more than he's stoic, hot, and bakes. Which like, I guess you could do worse!
Overall, this was just what I needed after a read that almost sent me into a slump. I'd definitely recommend this highly to fans of YA contemporaries and P&P!