Chef's Kiss SC

It's a 3.5 rounded up to a 4. Edit: Moved down to a three after letting it sit for a bit.

I really enjoyed the artwork; but I didn't really connect with the story.

Going into this, I was expecting a romance, and the romance is really an afterthought. The love interest really doesn't feature that much.

The main focus is on Ben meeting culinary challenges to be hired permanently at a restaurant, and his home life with his housemates. I'm not at all interested in food so, to be fair, those sections aren't really my jam. Plus, Ben was a bit of a Mary Sue in the cooking department, making changes to the recipes of experienced, trained chefs and miraculously elevating the dishes. There was never any tension that Ben might not pass the challenges.

The restaurant pig was cute... but was a really weird inclusion the didn't really jibe with the tone of the rest of the book.

I liked how it showed Ben and his housemates' life after college and supporting each other, though the programmer housemate (forget his name) could have been entirely cut without affecting anything at all. But, it was nice, and gave the story some heart.

Ultimately, I was expecting something different and wasn't super into the cooking stuff, which is totally on me picking up a book called “Chef's Kiss”. But in spite of this I still enjoyed it well enough. I think if you like food and the romance isn't your priority, you might dig this.