Review: A Sweet Mess by Jayci Lee
ARC provided by NetGalley.
I was very excited about this book. It is a contemporary romance between a pastry chef and the food reviewer who unknowingly gives her a bad review. I thought this sounded like a situation with great conflict and the rest of the summary made me think this was going to absolutely delight me. I was incorrect, I did not like this book.
The first big thing I really hated about this book is the food reviewer admits he was unfair in his review and that he should not have written a review based on literally one bite of food. But he absolutely will under no circumstances even literally consider doing a new review or printing a clarification or retraction. He comes across as a selfish coward and I fully rooted against him from this moment on. Later in the book their is discussion of his unwillingness to apologize and he actually says sorry about instances that happen later in the book but he at no point apologized for this.
The food absolutely was a choking hazard, it was a gummy worm in a chocolate peanut butter cake. But the book treats this like it is incredibly outlandish and sensational enough to cause loyal long time customers to completely abandon the restaurant. It is absolutely bizarre. And this man is supposed to be famous enough that he can singlehandedly ruin someones business but also it is perfectly reasonable that the heroine does not recognize him at all. His attempt at making things right is coming up with a convoluted round about opportunity for her to maybe save her business through exposure on a food show. Right after fully accusing her of sleeping with him for good press.
There is just nothing about this character that I like.
But it is not just him that I disliked about this book. I do not think the way this authors writes is for me at all. I found her plot be be conveyed in almost a mechanical way, almost nothing about this book was able to solicit emotion from me, and literally never was I engaged in the narrative. There was a point in time where the characters were having fun together and I thought it was cute then immediately the author tells the reader that the characters are having fun together. Her whole writing style came off as cringy and redundant.
I also found the romantic and sexual parts of this book kind of odd. When the hero meets the heroine he immediately thinks about hot she would be in bed, this sometimes works for me btu did not here. And this was before I started to hate him! This book starts out with the couple having a one night stand. It is fade to black, but then later the heroine awkwardly and vaguely recounds the encounter. It is the worst of both worlds, we get both a bad sex scene and no sex scene at the same time. Later in the book there is a sex scene that is short and vague and flowery and incredibly awkward to read. And she writes the worst dirty talk I have ever read. It just feels like the author is uncomfortable writing sex scenes but is including them anyway. It really would be a better book if it was purely fade to black.
There is also a scene where the heroine is apologizing to the hero for giving him mixed signals earlier. And in that scene she literally apologized for leaving him when he wanted to have sex with her. She says "I shouldn’t have run off and left you in that . . . um . . . condition. I didn’t mean to do that.” I really really hate this. It is just reinforcing rape culture ideology that men are owed sex and that denying a man sex when he wants it is an offense that requires an apology.
The heroine is delicate and incapable of lying and loves food but in a way that is erotic and not gluttonous. The hero gets so close to thinking he likes her because she isn't like other girls. She is offered money by the tv production company as compensation because her business will have to be closed while she is filming. Despite being in financial peril she refuses to maintain decorum which does kind of infuriate me. There is a point where this literal chef eats a lot of food and says “Did I actually eat all of this? Please tell me you ate enough, too.” Because she is worried she seemed like a glutton. I hate the underlying fatphobia here obviously, but also why is the chef embarrassed that she likes food? That is so nonsensical.
Part of the third act conflict in this book is a secret baby plot line. The hero does decide he wants the heroine back before he knows about the baby, but he doesn't actually take any steps towards getting her back until he knows about the child. I really dislike the implication here that he is spurred into action not by here but by his child. I just think it is more romantic for it to be because of the woman and not the baby and as this is a romance novel I think that is a valid desire.
Clearly this book did not work for me at all. I was bummed, I went into this book sure I would love it. But my romance hit rate is not excellent.
I gave this book one star.
