Cooking with Monsters

[cornerofmadness]

Cooking with Monsters by Jordan Alsaqa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was cute, weird but cute. A 3.5 read for me because the ending felt a bit unearned but expected. It does try to bring in a lot of inclusivity, multiple LGBT character and the struggles of immigrants and bullying trauma. Bobby and Hanna are from a small town and went monster hunting as kids and one of the warrior chefs saved them. Fast forward a few years and now they're going to some culinary warrior magic school to be Warrior Chefs in the town of Gourmet City in the country of Gourmand. Yeah the food puns just keep coming. As students they are sous chefs and everyone is fighting with spatulas and forks. Many of the side characters are LGBT including a transman, Selim (who was nicely introduced merely by top surgery scars) and several other non binary, bi/pan/gay characters.

Hanna meets Olivia the soon to be top student who she thinks will be great friends but when Olivia is assigned her mentor and it's the warrior chef who saved Hana (and whom Hana hero worships) Hanna is upset. Conversely Olivia wanted Hanna's mentor, an old man who is legendary in the business and Olivia has a connection with.

Way too much of it was this forced rivalry for my tastes when a simply conversation would have fixed things and then when they're finally forced to talk it just felt flat and unearned (or maybe felt like this could have happened 50 pages ago and we could have had a more complex plot). So it was good but not great. If you have a teen looking for an inclusive graphic novel this should do nicely.



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