The Spice King

It's a solid story and extremely well researched, but at the same time I just don't bond well with grumpy characters and pushy women so it took me awhile to really care what happened to them as a couple. I'm not sure I ever fully got over my initial “this will never work” impression of them together.

Grey is the “spice king” because he's a spice importer and dealer and wants to do it right, but the industry is full of cheats. The story does push the narrative of “we need the government to make a standard for doing this right” yet the irony is that we do have a government standard now and we still have adulterated and contaminated spices on store shelves.

I did enjoy reading about the spice industry and truly enjoyed the research in this department.

Annabelle kept managing to annoy me for some reason or other but it might just be me since plenty of other readers loved her.