Tag Archives: NYC

Dec29

Take the Lead by Alexis Daria

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Take the Lead by Alexis Daria

Daria, Alexis. Take the Lead. (Dance Off #1) St. Martin’s, 2023. 352pp. ISBN 9781250817969 $17.99

***

This remastered romance novel gets a facelift with updated text and an artful cover. Strong silent type Alaska native Stone Neilson stars with his family in a roughing it wilderness show; he is paired with vivacious Puerto Rican dancer Gina on a Dancing with the Stars-type reality television dance competition. He needs to help pay for his mother’s hip replacement surgery, and keep the truth about his family’s backstory quiet. Meanwhile, Gina is looking for a bigger break to launch her career, and if she and her dance partner don’t make it as finalists this year, she’s out of a job. Her boss is itching for some showmance between them to bring in the ratings.

In movies, the way a couple dances together–intense, playful, timid–is supposed to serve as a metaphor for how they are in the sack together. Part of Stone’s character growth is understanding how dance can convey emotion. In spite of his lack of formal training, he’s a quick learner with a good teacher. Gina is resistant to a relationship with a dance partner for personal and professional reasons, but their attraction is immediate and palpable, and she gives in. Their chemistry is both a boon and liability. They foxtrot, tango, jive, rumba and more, mostly scoring high throughout the completion. Some mean-girl antics from a fellow competitor, support from some crew members, and scheming from the producer round out the drama of this tale.

High on dance moves, fashion details, and peppered with Spanish, the writing is straight forward but solid. I appreciated the Puerto Rican cultural details and that the author didn’t feel the need to translate any words or phrases, but skillfully conveyed meaning to the reader through context. My two quibbles: the author–or editor–chose to leave some dramatic competition scenes off the page. Sometimes we get more details about rehearsal than the pivotal moments! Secondly, probing conversations with well-meaning parents are so short they seem abrupt.

I received a free advance reader’s review copy of #TakeTheLead from #NetGalley.

Dec18

To Sir, With Love by Laurel Layne

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To Sir, With Love by Laurel Layne

Layne, Laurel. To Sir, With Love. Gallery Books, 2021. 288 pp. ISBN 9781982152819 $16.99.

****

Lauren Layne excels in opposites attract stories. This story of anonymous digital pen pals who don’t realize they know (and dislike) one another IRL puts a modern spin on the classics Parfumerie, The Shop Around the Corner and You’ve Got Mail: an ouvre of plays and movies about letters exchanged with a frenemy, not knowing the secret admirer and antagonist are one and the same.

Gracie Cooper is struggling to keep her family’s champagne store business afloat with her original drinking in NYC themed watercolors for sale along with strategic merchandising (pretty cocktail napkins and quirky corkscrews). An offer to buy out her lease from a real estate developer is an affront to her commitment to her parent’s legacy, even tho running the family business is not what she wants to be doing with her life. She’s a fairy tale romantic still hoping for her Prince Charming, fantasizing about a brown haired, brown-eyed musician with a dad bod. She signs up for a unique dating app that’s the opposite of Tinder: get to know someone with NO images. She connects with a mystery man she calls Sir, buts he’s not available, having been signed up for the app after mocking a friend who met his fiancé online–when he’s already in a relationship.

Their connection deepens as the letters from the development firm increase and finally the hot (blue-eyed) man in charge shows up at her door in what can only be described as a meet surly. Sebastian Andrews appears to be full of contradictions: sometimes mean, but always regretful, and ambitious but kind, he wants to see people settled and seems to become friend with the business owners he displaced to benefit his family’s real estate deals. And when Gracie starts to implement her hands off siblings ideas to turn her shop around, Sebastian shows up for events as a patron, as if he wants her to succeed. In one funny scene, he shows up dateless to a couples cooking class that Bubbles & More is putting on, and Gracie’s co-workers insist on her joining him. Their cooking is delightedly disastrous.

The cast of characters from customers to co-workers to family and friends seem vivid and real, as if each one could someday be the star of their own book. Layne excels at little details that make a person bloom off the page. Including NYC style living, which almost makes the city a character in it’s own right, with pop up flower carts, skyscrapers, taxis and To Sir With Love is a romance with plenty of heart and vulnerability, lots of yearning, and zero on-the-pages nookie–and I didn’t miss it, it worked.

Spoiler alert–highlight to read: I didn’t like the intrusion of the ghosts of the parents at the very end or the babylogue after Gracie’s sister struggled with infertility – childlessness is a valid (and sometimes painful choice), but readers who need a HEA instead of HFN won’t be as bothered.

I received a free advance reader’s review copy of #ToSirWithLove from #NetGalley.

Oct10

French Kissing in New York by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau

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French Kissing in New York by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau

Jouhanneau, Anne-Sophie. French Kissing in New York. Delacorte, 2023. 336 pp.ISBN 978-0593173619. $12.99

***

When Parisian Margot and American Zach and meet at a high school culinary program in France, they fall fast, enjoy exploring Paris together, agree long distance relationships are recipes for disaster and pledge to meet again in a year in New York a very specific location in Times Square. Fast forward a year; Margot has gone to NY to stay with her dad for a bit, and anticipates a restaurant job that doesn’t involve using her chef mother’s clout, but lands at Nutrio. They call her desparate for help while she is still jet-lags, she accomodates and shows up in time for family meal… only to get trained on the commercial dishwasher in spite of her culinary chops. To add insult to injury, she gets out of work late, and gets turned around on the subway. Zach either misses the connection–or just didn’t care enough to show up.

When Margot shares the details of the relationship and failed meeting with line cook Ben, he offers to help her track down the guy. He is also a wonderful support when Margot is bullied at work. Every time she is on the verge of giving up on Zach, and beginning to consider that maybe Ben might be more than just a friend, the trail heats up with some new sighting or detail, and she’s back to Zach.

This a unique coming of age tale about identity, geography, and connections, with a strong setting and predictable ending. The food details are great–there’s a funny moment where Luz tells Margot that cinnamon is the national spice and we put it on everything, and much to Margot’s horror, goes on to explain the pumpkin spice phenomenon and the concept of seasonal coffee. The touristy descriptions of the people along the Highline and the shops in the West Village, even the rats, are fresh through Margot’s eyes.

I received a free advance reader’s review copy of #FrenchKissingInNewYork from #NetGalley.

Oct10

Best Served Hot by Amanda Elliot

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Best Served Hot by Amanda Elliot

Elliot, Amanda. Best Served Hot. Berkley, 2022. 386 pp. ISBN 978-0593335734 $17.00

****

Two restaurant critics go about their reviews in very different ways: Julie is a built from scratch go-getter with 50,000 followers on social media, pays for all her meals, and takes a photo of everything she eats, favoring ethnic food and hole in the wall spots. Bennett is an ivy-leaguer fan of fine dining who takes longhand notes at his expensed meals–and he’s just landed a coveted column at the New York Scroll that Julie applied for and didn’t get. When their competitive natures collide at a food festival and their argument goes viral, the newspaper’s marketing team decides a little friendly competition is in order, and in hopes of boosting both their print subscribers and followers, offers to pair them together and send them to joint review a bunch of eateries. They agree, with reservations, and develop a grudging respect for one another as they break bread at a number of establishments. A particular fine and funny moment is when they challenge one another to a cook-off, decide to make burgers, and the comedy of errors ends at ShackBurgers.

Far from a superficial book about food, Best Served Hot explores themes of class, wealth and privilege, social media and image, job satisfaction. I also felt a little thrill when Bennett references Thomas Keller’s Per Se loss of a michelin star and review downgrade from 2 to 4 stars–and I knew when it occurred, and why; and I chuckled when I realized I had read Pete Well’s scathing takedown of Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar. There is an art to timely allusions that make the reader feel smart when they get them (as opposed to alienated or worse, stupid, when they don’t), and Elliot hits the right note.

As in Sadie on a Plate, the food is front and center, and it’s the lush descriptions of what they eat that will make your heart pound and elicit your envy, admiration, and longing: “The bread was earthy and chewy, crunchy on the bottom and meltingly soft on top, and rather than rubbing the bread with tomato as in a traditional pan con tomate (yes, I’d done my research), the raw tomato had been shredded and mashed and spread on top, a cool, sweet, tangy contrast to the bread. A hint of garlic spoke up in the back of my throat; anchovies whispered somewhere underneath, the salt and the brine making everything else taste sweeter.” If that isn’t a metaphor for the individual features of their complex relationship Julie and Bennett have that creates a perfect whole, I don’t know what is.

The sex was more descriptive that in Elliot’s previous book (the single flaw I found was Julie’s boasting about her anatomy’s allowing for the capability of multiple orgasms and Bennett not pursuing that particular challenge).

I received an advance reader’s review copy of #BestServedHot from #NetGalley.

Mar30

Lease on Love by Falcon Ballard

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Lease on Love by Falcon Ballard

Ballard, Falcon. Lease on Love. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022. ISBN 978-0593419915 352 pp. $16

****

When misogyny rears its ugly head and Sadie is passed over for a promotion because they went with the boss’s new son-in-law (who has ZERO experience), Sadie’s profanity-laden spouting off leads to her termination. In her wallowing, she decides now might be the time to cheer herself up with online dating (she’s more of a one-night stand type). In one of the best meet-cutes EVER, she sits down for date only to discover the dude in front of her is looking for a roommate, actually. His brownstone is gorgeous and rent is low, so Sadie leaps in and then opts to moonlight as a bartender while she pursues her true passion: floral arranging with local, in-season blooms and found objects as the receptacles.

This is not another NYC 20-something romance. For one thing, Sadie is self-proclaimed supremely annoying. Self-deprecating to a nearly self-abusive fault, she is a bit messy in all aspects of her slap-dash life, has a running verbal diatribe, and is wonderfully redeemed by her warm generosity and humor. Jack, the roommate, is a nerdy gamer reclusive man of mystery who slowly opens up to Sadie, treats her like gold, and intimates he’s interested but just not ready. And shockingly, Ms. One Night Stand realizes A. she wants to bone him and 2. she hasn’t so much as flirted with anyone else in five months because Jack is becoming her everything.

This rom-com has the requisite first kiss… but a more real, welcome, realistic and thank goodness less rare let’s take our time and find mutual satisfaction with consent and patience, and rather than gory details of the first time they have penetrative (it took me like 4 tries to spell that, friends) sex, we glimpse the first time after testing without the condom, and it’s sweet and exquisite and intimate. Obvs, there is the declaration of love, followed by too many secrets, a falling out, and making up–but again, with sweetness and patience and realism.

The diverse supporting characters in this novel are FANTASTIC. Sadie’s ride or die crew are her college suitemates Gemma, a frustrated schoolteacher of Asian descent who wants to make food for a living and Harley, an African-American public defender; and wealthy Nick, who has been hanging around them since college (a nice subplot is his crushing on Harley). They rally whenever Sadie needs something, and befriend Jack (he and Nick have a special bond), even inviting him into the group text chat. The way they all make a family is rich and believable.

There were a few times I found Sadie’s voice a little over the top… and then she redeemed herself by revealing past trauma, or her friends defended her behavior. She was a fully realized, flawed character deserving of love who implements techniques from therapy… and goes back when she needs to do more work.

This was a fast but delicious read, with fun artistic details of becoming a florist and starting your own business and figuring who you are, and who you want to be in your twenties. The cover art feels a little more island-y than Brooklyn, and there was a LOT of drinking (I might be old and judgy) that made me a feel a little out of touch with youth culture, but ultimately this was a very satisfying read.

I received an advance reader’s review copy of #LeaseOnLove via #NetGalley.