The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake

[cornerofmadness]

The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake by Rachel Linden

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In full disclosure, I have no idea why I requested this from Netgalley and feel a bit guilty because it should have gone to someone who likes contemporary romance. I do not. I think it was the Italian setting (I've been getting into my roots lately) or the magic realism of the cookbook.

The blurb basically gives away most of the plot so I don't need to go over much of that. Jules leaves in a small apartment with her friend Drew and since Covid they've been making cooking videos, her cooking vintage recipes and him dancing in the background but when the tv show producers want only him, her dreams are dashed. To top it over her cookbook publisher wants their 10K advance back if she doesn't deliver on the recipes (they hated their first attempt and I'm SO eyeing that advance. While I never wrote a cookbook I can tell you my publisher never offered me an advance like that, perils of indie publishing I suppose)

Heartbroken, Jules' day gets worse when her overbearing mother wants her to take her half sister, Alex to Italy for the summer to visit Jules' nonna, who is not Alessandra's grandmother as she's a half sister Jules never bothered to get to know (Her mom should never have had one child let alone three). In fact my favorite moment is when Jules introduces Nonna Bruna to Alex calling her a half sister and Bruna verbally slaps her about it.

Jules has reasons for not going to Italy, her father, Bruna's son, died in Lake Garda there but she wants Nonna's recipes to save the day. Naturally she runs into her first love Nicolo, now a lawyer turned olive farmer who is trying to save the family olive farm. And weirdly enough Nonna's cookbook only shows one recipe at a time, whatever one you need most to make your heart's desire to come true that day. And of course the farm is in financial trouble too and needs new caretaker as Nonna and her brother in law Lorenzo too old at this point.

Not going to lie. I was going to give this a weak four star because I'm so out of my genre and that's not the book's fault. It's mine. However, I realized it wasn't the romance or the contemporary setting I didn't like much. It's Jules herself. Loved her sister and Nonna but Jules left me very meh and let me tell you why.

Let's start with money. Jules needs 10K back if she fails at the cookbook. Nonna needs money. But you can NOT keep crying poor if you give Jules not one, but two rich relatives. Mom's second husband is a blindingly rich surgeon but I can see why you wouldn't ask her for money. Jules' sister with the farm and six kids is married to a tech bro millionaire. While you can say there is no reason Sis should bail Jules out (how about nonna? Does she not care about her?) there is NO mention of Jules even thinking to ask. I got to the 50% mark and it never occurs to her to bring it up to her sister. Never occurs to her to ask her boutique farming sister how to work a farm in order to help nonna (and don't get me started on the whole flowy dress, picture perfect sister while working the farm. I've done this work and that doesn't fly). Just a simple sentence or two about why she doesn't want to ask her family for money to help would have helped but as is it's like how foolish are you to not ask your rich sister/mother for help?

Jules is incredibly selfish especially where Alessandra is concerned. So yes, I can see why she'd be upset about how her gold digging mother left her dad and remarried but that's not the girl's fault (and yes of course, this does happen in the real world) Jules' reason for being so indifferent to Alex is when Jules had to live with her stepdad and half sister after dad passed when she was 16 was Alex didn't bond with her. The girl was 2. Jules has been carrying a decade long grudge because a two year old didn't react the way she wanted her to. And she keeps being rather awful to her, making it clear Alex is a burden (until she realizes Alex's TikTok and photography savvy will help her career)

And Jules really makes zero character growth and has little agency until like the last 20% of the novel after everyone basically knocks sense into her (Nonna, Nicolo and Alex) after they're all fed up with her. The whole ending really is not her idea (it's Alex who comes through there) and while I'm not sure telling the world about this cookbook was smart, I was also disappointed in the idea that she had to choose Italy or LA. It's not like you shoot cooking shows 365. Never occurs to her to spent a month or two in LA and live in Italy....

I wanted so much more out of Jules and never got it. Notice I haven't mentioned Nicolo, mostly because he's stock romance love interest and in the days between me finishing this and me sitting down to review it, I've forgotten most of his scenes.



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