I liked this better than than the first one, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors. I actually can't tell you anything about the first book because I don't remember it, and I usually remember something. But I do recall I was reading about retellings of Austen at the time.

There are not a lot of retellings of the Persuasion (which is my favorite Austen), and that is why I was looking forward to this one and intrigued how it would work. If you think about it, Persuasion is not a happy heartfelt book, and neither is this one.

Ashna Raje is a chef and owner of her deceased father's restaurant. Money is tight, and she is convinced by the family to do a Food Network Competition as a Professional Chef with a celebrity. Rico Silva, her high school sweetheart and first (only?) major breakup twelve years before, is a football/soccer legend who is retiring and notices the new competition and uses it to reconnect because he has never gotten over her.

The reason with the three stars is that this book has too many points of view, and I feel the mother section, while important, takes to much of the story of the two main characters. Sure, her story and life are a secondary character with her love interest, but I feel it takes away from the original story. This book is more literary fiction than RomCom/Romance genre. There has been a lot of those recently, with the RomCom/ChickLit covers. Then I get disappointed because I don't get my fluff that I was looking for because of the amount of drama (way more than I want in my RC/CL HEAs), but that is a publishing thing and a personal preference thing.

If you think about the book as mainstream literary fiction, it's very good. It's written well; the story was engaging - I read it in one setting after midnight one morning.

TW: Suicide and Rape mentioned and discussed, and part of the back story, none of it happens in the present day of the book.

I received an ARC from Edelweiss and Berley for an honest review.