A review by crothe77
Celestial Banquet by Roselle Lim

emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

5.0

 

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

Celestial Banquet by Roselle Lim is a first person-POV YA fantasy. The prize for winning the Celestial Banquet is a bunch of Peaches of Immortality, which grant twenty-five years to mortals and more for minor gods. Cai not only wants the peaches, but the fame and fortune that comes with winning to open her own restaurant and accomplish her father’s dreams. But it won’t be easy as the Celestial Banquet isn’t only about cooking, contestants also have to kill monsters and cook with brand new ingredients. 

Cai has two potential love interests in her childhood friend, Bo, and a disgraced noble, Seon. Both are very much interested in her and have different relationships from her, though both do push her to make a decision. Seon is a flirt, which makes her not take his feelings seriously at first and her previous feelings for Bo have morphed into something more platonic until he says something. The back and forth between the two doesn’t take up a lot of the plot, but it definitely is present. I found myself rooting for Seon despite feeling bad for Bo. Seon just felt like the choice that would respect Cai’s feelings more, which is what I usually go for. 

There is a cozy quality to this in all the cooking elements and how it uses a tournament. The leads don’t spend that much time with the monsters and more time is spent focused on the cooking, romance, and the results. I think the focus on relationships also helps to sell the coziness even though many of the relationships are more on the tragic side. I wouldn’t call it a cozy fantasy but it is cozy-adjacent since the stakes are more personal and the plot elements are closer to cozy than they are to epic. 

I really liked the little worldbuilding blurbs that appeared between every chapter. All of the blurbs have citations that help enrich the world and show there are a variety of sources being drawn from. Things like this make the world feel bigger and in a book that is more claustrophobic, it provides a sense of balance that makes it feel lived in and rich without sacrificing the focus on relationships. 

I would recommend this to fans of Iron Chef who are looking for a YA fantasy and fans of cozy fantasy