[Review] Love from Scratch - Kaitlyn Hill

Summary: This summer, Reese Camden is trading sweet tea and Southern hospitality for cold brew and crisp coastal air. She's landed her dream marketing internship at Friends of Flavor, a wildly popular cooking channel in Seattle. The only problem? Benny Beneventi, the relentlessly charming, backwards-baseball-cap-wearing culinary intern—and her main competition for the fall job.

Reese's plan to keep work a No Feelings Zone crumbles like a day-old muffin when she and Benny are thrown together for a video shoot that goes viral, making them the internet's newest ship. Audiences are hungry for more, and their bosses at Friends of Flavor are happy to deliver. Soon Reese and Benny are in an all-out food war, churning homemade ice cream, twisting soft pretzels, breaking eggs in an omelet showdown—while hundreds of thousands of viewers watch. (Pub Date: Apr 05 2022)

 

I confess I had picked this book to read by mistake, as it wasn't supposed to be the next on my list, and for the first pages or maybe the whole first chapter, I didn't realize this was YA. This is to say, I think it is a book that should agree even with the romance/chick lit readers that usually skip the YA genre.

3.5, rounding up.

One of the reasons is that it doesn't take place in a school but in a summer internship for a famous culinary show. Reese is about to start college and would very like to guarantee the spot for the fall. Things change for her when she and the other intern must host a special episode for the show, despite her lack of culinary practice. The two go viral but with that comes a competition between them, even though they are attarcted to one another and worse, the comments on the internet will make Reese have to face a past trauma she thought she'd left behind in school.

While the beginning wasn't so obviously YA, we do find some typical elements there, though not as in your face as most of the others. For this reason, I believe it is recommendable for both regular romance readers who like witty characters and YA lovers such as myself.

This is a romantic story but I like how it deals with the toxicity both online and in real life. Sometimes I thought it could go overboard, as in losing focus of the story to make speeches, but luckily it wasn't the case. This is a down-to-earth but still swoon-worthy read that will entertain you.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.