Food, Porn and Food Porn.
It was easy to love your idea of someone - to fall hard for their very best self. The question was whether, once you had to spend some time living with their worst self, you could bear to be with them anymore.
Every time I pick up an adult or new adult contemporary romance book, with how often these kinds of book has left me frustrated, I brace myself for a certain degree of disappointment. That snarling grinch, jaded reader in me preemptively bares its claws at a ready for some shredding.
This, however, swept me off my feet and gave me that tingly little feeling on the toes. Swooning. I think that's what the kids call it these days. But, disclaimer, with a lot of bias on my part.
This is Marco Pierre White.
He's looking a little worse for the wear the past few years but back in the day he was the quintessential rockstar chef. He dated supermodels, he was a temperamental asshole in the kitchen (Gordon Ramsay probably learned the art of it from him being his sous chef) and he retired for a while because he didn't want to be a slave to everyone's opinions and stars anymore. He eventually sold out and did cooking shows and reality TV but I'd like to edit that out from my fantasies.
Obvi I had the biggest crush on him.
I have an enduring, unhealthy fangirl obsession towards chefs. Celebrity and actual chefs. I'm not wealthy and crazy enough to spend so much money for a meal in their 3-star Michelin restaurants (and artsy food and me probably won't mix well together anyway), but their passion and drive for their craft fascinates me. I think its the hands. There's something terribly erotic about manly hands shaping something as ugly as, I dunno, broccoli and feeding it to you with foam and gastrique and garnishes.
And Ruthie Knox just tapped into that silly little groupie in me with this little book, examining that passion, that obsessive creativity and the toll it charges for it. There's a healthy number of heroes out there in CR who are hot, alpha chefs but none captured the complexity and intensity of what makes a chef attractive to me as much as Ben Hausman's character did.
"You're a great cook."
Funny the way that hit him - with a wash of warmth, as if nobody had ever told him before. "You're great to cook for."
Maybe when he opened his new place, he should do breakfast. He always liked cooking breakfast. Humble food.
But humble food didn't get you Michelin stars. You'd have to transform it into some whole other thing. Tamarind syrup on your griddlecakes. Oxtail reduction swirled on top of your hand-ground Italian grits.
Our protagonists meet in a Green Bay Packers Club in New York, a day after Wisconsin-native May Fredricks stabbed her NY Jets quarterback fiancee with a fork after his tactless proposal. She's just broken up with him by post-it when she got mugged, rendering her penniless, phoneless and friendless in a city as alien to her as the idea of coming up to a surly stranger in an unfamiliar bar for help. Said surly stranger is Ben Hausman, a chef working as a beekeeper (Yes! A freaking beekeeper!) after his divorce, keeping his anger management issues in check. Ben and May strikes up an unusual friendship where he endeavors to change May's perspective in life, starting with New York (which she hates) and in the process changes his own.
Truly employed New York in its story arc the way Anna and the French Kiss used Paris as the driving force behind the story of Anna and St. Clair but instead of writing the themes of self-worth and acceptance around a coming of age story, Ben and May are coming to terms with their second chances, finding a way to doing things right.
May has been living the life expected of her, not the life she wanted for herself while Ben has lived the life that he wanted but his passion and intensity ended up crippling and consuming him in the end. They meet at that point when their mistakes have left them in deconstructed pieces and each are trying to put things back together, make sense of themselves and making room for each other's pieces to make them whole.
I thought the premise of the story's beginning was a little too contrived. Though between May and me, only one got to pick up a hot chef in a bar who just happens to be the right blend of sweet and grumpy, so really, what do I know? Which reminds me,
NOTE TO SELF 1: Get mugged, go to a bar, look for the guy reading a paperback and ask if he's a chef.
NOTE TO SELF 2: check if he's hot first before Note to self 1.
I thought May was a little too damsel-in-distress in the beginning, which is of course the point of their relationship's origins, but seeing all that as the amuse bouche of their story, I was reluctant to forge on and continue. I'm glad that I did because I eventually liked where everything headed. Because eventually, Knox made both her characters likable, complex and flawed, even May who's not as original and came off a little stale against Ben the Beekeeper Chef.
If anything that
"I'd tempt you with an eel pie.""Yuck.""Don't knock it. You haven't tried my eel pie.""And yet somehow I'm not tempted."
"If you tried it, you'd be more than tempted. I could tie you naked to my headboard and have you begging for it." He slanted her a glance that made her flush all over. "Oops. Did I say that out loud?"
This was told in alternating, third person POVs between Ben, May and Allie (who I suppose will be featured in the next book) with each chapter focused on Ben or May learning a lesson from the other. It was quite disappointing when its Ben's time to impart wisdom towards May, his previously revealed issues get pushed in the background. It made the story feel a little less seamless to me because I didn't really want to lose either characters when the focus isn't on them.
But for all its faults and imperfections, Ben and May's story will probably stick with me for awhile. Not because of the originality of the story (because it wasn't) or the likability of the characters (because I'll be honest, I really REALLY liked Ben) but because the lessons were learned, the message was clear and this gave me exactly what it promised and probably more.
He wasn't the kind of guy a woman wanted to pin her hopes and dreams on. Not at all.
But that was good, because she wasn't the kind of woman who wanted to pin her hopes and dreams on a guy.
Not anymore.
This book is currently available free in Wattpad until December 31 and will be published by Random House Loveswept in August 2014. Quotes may not appear in the final edition.
I downloaded the free app because of this book. I regret NOTHING.
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