I was really hoping to love this one bc I love food-based romances, I love queer romances, and I love BIPOC romances. All of my favorites in one book? Wow! And yet…..

Thing I enjoyed:
-both protagonists were people of color, Gabi is Puerto Rican and Theo is Chinese and Japanese
-Great cover and title
-the premise is fun and interesting
-the resolution of the shops at the end

Things I did not enjoy
-this is YA, but it felt much younger than the typical YA because everyone was so one dimensional and kinda immature. Now there is a discussion to be had about how a lot of YA is written for an adult audience and not necessarily reflective of the actual YA experience, but in this book it felt like I was rolling my eyes a lot at their immaturity and dialogue
-all the side characters have no depth. Meli ONLY cares about homecoming and is weirdly intense about it, Gabi’s parents ONLY ever speak to him to say homophobic comments even though they don’t know he’s gay, at first Theo ONLY hates Gabi and is nothing but difficult to him, etc.
-I got whiplash from the deep hate to the kinda like to the love phase between Gabi and Theo. More so from Theo, since Gabi was more open to it the entire time. It feels like insta-love from Theo even though they’ve grown up together. We don’t see Theo have any reckoning feelings of realizing maybe he hasn’t hated Gabi this whole time, maybe it’s actually misplaced feelings of love, yadda yadda, because Theo has no emotional intelligence. One day he realizes Gabi isn’t so bad and then now they’re dating. Here’s a prime example (from Theo’s POV) about halfway through the book when they’re in the “maybe we’re actually not” phase:

“It’s a nice day out,” Gabi says finally.
“You’re making small talk about the weather?”
“I-well, to be honest, I don’t really know what you’d like to talk about, since you’re usually just yelling at me.”
I laughed, but his face still looks dead serious. It’s not like he’s wrong, obviously, because a few weeks ago I would’ve offered to scrub the locker room toilets down if it meant not spending an hour with Gabriel Moreno, but I don’t know…I thought we were past that.
…..skipping some internal monologue here…..
“We can talk about anything,” I say. “I kind of just want a distraction.”
He stares back at me kind of blankly for a moment before saying, “Did you know axolotl‘s can regrow limbs?”
…..skipping some discussion about what axolotls are….
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You said you wanted to distraction.”
“I did say that but I didn’t think you’d dive into the weirdest fact you know.”
He sighs. “That’s not the weirdest fact I know, but I digress.”
I laugh, and he looks at me like I just grew a new limb, but come on! What a loser! I told him I wanted a distraction for my life problems, so he went into random facts about axo-manders like that’s what I meant.


Ok this is a very long quote but my POINT here is that Theo called Gabi to come over and talk because he was having a bad day with his parents. Gabi drops everything and comes over, and does his best to distract Theo, who up until this point has almost been nothing but mean to Gabi. Only for Theo to mock Gabi’s attempts and then for Theo call him a loser (in his head, but still). What do you want, Theo???? We’re halfway through the book and you’re actively (mentally) calling Gabi a loser when he is doing his best to help?? Ugh.

So anyways, tl;dr - I did not enjoy this book.