This is one of those books that leaves me with a lot of mixed feelings. On one hand, I liked plenty of things about it! Everything that usually draws me into Courtney Milan's novels is here: the wonderful character development, the descriptive prose, the strong sense of setting. I  was enamored by the racially and culturally diverse village of Wedgeford with all of its wonderful people and interesting traditions. I loved learning a few new things about Chinese culture and Chinese immigrants in England at the end of the 19th century. Chloe is now firmly among my favorite characters ever (her lists! her striving for a perfectly complete list! so relatable!), and I adored her father, as well. All the food descriptions? To die for. The subplot with the Nameless Sauce? I was completely engrossed. Really, reading this book was quite an enjoyable experience!

Unfortunately, the romance fell really short for me, and I can't say I liked Jeremy very much. He had his moments in isolation, but I couldn't root for him and Chloe at all. Don't get me wrong, I like mistaken identity romances very much, but they have to be done right, and this one just... wasn't. Not for my tastes. While I can empathize with Jeremy's problem—"I started lying by omission when I was a kid striving to belong, and now I'm so far gone I don't know how to stop"—I can't help but scrunch up my nose at the method he chose to tackle it. Because it can basically be summed up as, "...So I'll keep lying until I maybe accidentally lie myself out toward the truth," and because the whole thing with hiring Chloe to make a list of her qualities under the pretense of needing to find a wife who is her carbon copy is just eeky somehow. He's basically playing a prank on her and toying with her feelings and makes it her job to figure out what he wants from her, when she has very clearly communicated to him that she needs him to be serious. Throw in the class/power imbalance the extent of which Chloe isn't even aware of, and there are too many aspects of the situation that make me uncomfortable. Some of them are kind of tackled and discussed in the second half, but mostly, this felt like a mindfuck described as cuteness, and I'm not a fan.