Henri is a cooking apprentice and he wants to be a proper French baker. Then, the Italians start to invade France’s cooking scene and change their cooking traditions entirely. When Henri’s witty tongue gets him in trouble, he has to find the ingredients of gelato in a short period of time or he loses his apprenticeship and has to work for his uncle. In order to find the gelato recipe, he has to woo one of the Italians. At first everything is purely business, but then Henri starts to fall for the gelato creator.
I have to say; this book would have been far better if Henri had been more likeable. Alix, a young apprentice, embarrasses himself because he had diarrhea when he was presenting his hot chocolate to the master chefs and a noble. Alix had a crush on Henri and saved him by providing him with powdered sugar for his botched cookies just hours before. But does Henri stay quiet and allow his friend a moment of humiliation in peace? No! He makes a joke about how Alix the Chocolatier makes pudding from both ends, causing Alix to run out of the room weeping, and no one even laughed at Henri’s “joke” because he did this in front of the head chefs. Henri was never truly apologetic for ruining Alix’ chance at being a French chef, and he only feels sorry for himself because he has to find the gelato recipe now. I think I disliked him from this point in the book, and he didn’t get any more likeable for me.
The overall story was pretty confusing and seemed to jump around a lot. One minute Henri is being lectured by his uncle, the next he is fooling around with a priest in a barrel. I could never predict where Henri would be from chapter to chapter.
The only thing that I can say that I enjoyed in this book was the romance. Henri didn’t believe in romance or love until he met the gelato creator, he just believed in using sex for gain. Then, the gelato creator changed everything. This love story truly saved the entire book for me, even though it kept getting interrupted by the more annoying parts of the story.
I would neither recommend nor bash this story. It is a nice LGBT historical romance novel that is just ruined by an unlikeable character. If you are interested in reading and can get past this character, I would recommend it to you.
I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 books.
