The Art of French Kissing
Brianna R. Shrum
Seventeen-year-old Carter Lane has wanted to be a chef since she was old enough to ignore her mom's warnings to stay away from the hot stove. And now she has the chance of a lifetime: a prestigious scholarship competition in Savannah, where students compete all summer in Chopped style challenges for a full-ride to one of the best culinary schools in the country. The only impossible challenge ingredient in her basket: Reid Yamada. After Reid, her cute but unbearably cocky opponent, goes out of his way to screw her over on day one, Carter vows revenge, and soon they're involved in a full-fledged culinary war. Just as the tension between them reaches its boiling point, Carter and Reid are forced to work together if they want to win, and Carter begins to wonder if Reid's constant presence in her brain is about more than rivalry. And if maybe her desire to smack his mouth doesn't necessarily cancel out her desire to kiss it.
Publication Year: 2018
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Update 2 days later: lowering this to 1 star because life is short and my hate is still going strong :)
Carter Lane, I have something to say to you:
To say that I HATE CARTER LANE would be an understatement. She was so annoying it was unbelievable. She ruined the whole book with her idiotic behavior and the whole "I didn't do anything wrong, everyone else is to blame" attitude. I had about 7-8 quotes prepared for this review (yes, she was THAT bad), but I accidentally deleted them ;_; It doesn't matter anyway.
Let's start from the beginning. The title itself is so cringey and I really should've know that a book that has "french kissing" in the title, just can't be good. I don't even know why I expected this book to be about actual cooking. The content of this book can be summarized like this: 10% cooking/competition stuff, 40% kissing and staring at Reid, 5% fandom/geek references and 45% Carters ridiculous behavior and/or arguing with Reid over nothing.
Those 45% was so horrible and boring to read. It went something like this: Reid messed with Carters ingredient (but it's actually her fault for not reading what it said on the bag -.-) and then she tripped him so he ruined his WHOLE DISH and literally made several people's lives worse - because it was a group assignment, when Reid (aka Carter) messed up, they all lost "points" and were therefore sent home and lost the scholarship. And they just continued doing stupid stuff which didn't effect just them, but everyone else as well - but they didn't care. Especially Carter. She literally blamed everyone else but herself. *spoilers* She even asked Reid to apologize to her after he was honest and told her he felt sad after she got in the semis and he didn't. LIKE WHAT?!? This dude literally lost a chance to go to a college with full scholarship, and you're angry at him because he's not jumping with joy that you got it?
I felt sorry for Reida, this girl is nuts. But who cares? The main thing is that Miss Carter Purple Hair Lane is feeling great because not only did she get a lot of money even though she didn't deserve it, she also got a boyfriend on this competition. There were also some random paragraphs about her backstory - how she's a poor little thing who doesn't have that much money, who had to cook with mediocre pans and pots and who doesn't know what to do with herself because she's so insecure.
Boo-freaking-hoo. The whole insecurity thing was particularly annoying because it felt so fake - just like every conversation in this book - it was utterly unbelievable and unnatural. One moment she's all like "do I even belong in this school, I'm so incompetent, nobody likes me" and the next "I deserve this, I'm better than them and if anybody says otherwise, I'm gonna break their neck"
Seriously, just stop.
The only reason why I didn't give this book a 1 star rating is because of that 10% of cooking that I mentioned. That was the only remotely interesting part of the book and the author really did talk about food in a passionate way. Considering The Great British Bake Off is one of my fave shows, I loved all the cooking-competition scenes. Unfortunately, there was so little of them you might as well call this book just a romance novel SET in cooking school. I definitely wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, unless you ran out of wood and need something to burn, in that case, go ahead XD
0FULL REVIEW: https://readbytiffany.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/bullet-point-book-review-the-art-of-french-kissing-by-brianna-r-shrum/
A cute title and a cute cover? I’m intrigued. 👀I have been on a major contemporary reading spree lately, and The Art of French Cooking *ahem I mean French Kissing* was one that I knew I needed to pick up. 💖 However, while the premise and plot had major potential, it lacked that special spark to make me fall in love.
WHAT I LOVED 💘
• The beginning is super captivating, and I was instantly engrossed in the story. ✏ The writing is very simple and direct which makes it easy to follow.
• I loved the storyline— a YA romance meets a cutthroat cooking competition. 🍴 We have the structure of Chopped meeting the intensity of Cutthroat Kitchen sprinkled with the cuteness of Cupcake Wars.
• The food descriptions are really satisfying. You’ll be hungry right from the first page. I wanted to start snacking the second I started reading, and I loved the descriptions of Carter cooking because it was a major throwback for seven-year-old Tiffany who wanted to be a chef.
• THAT COVER…I adore it. 😍
WHAT I DIDN’T LOVE 💔
• It’s a cutthroat cooking competition with teenagers 🔪 so we can expect some sneakiness to make the plot more interesting, but all the sabotage became juvenile and repetitive very fast. At first, it was captivating and made everything more intense but eventually, it became more frustrating than interesting.
• There is almost no mention of French cooking??? (I mean it’s crossed out in the title, but I still expected some French cuisine) 🤷♀️
• The story itself isn’t well-paced. Although I loved the beginning of the story, the middle and ending were too jumbled. We would fly through 3-4 competition tasks with no explanation, but I would’ve preferred the author just focusing on a few big missions that were better developed.
• Towards the middle of the book, everything becomes super predictable—you’ll know how everything is going to play out. (And not the good kind of predictable)
Overall, the storyline had the potential be as heartwarming as a Kasie West or Morgan Matson novel, but it needed a bit more development and refining. 😕 While it started off very promising, I found myself skimming the pages towards the end. I would still recommend this book, but personally, it just wasn’t my cup of tea.
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