REVIEWED by Jay V.

TITLE: Chef vs. Chef

AUTHOR: MJ O’Shea

SERIES: Sizzling in the Kitchen #2

PUBLISHER: Self Published

RELEASE DATE: June 5, 2019

BLURB:

Bobby Diaz has worked his whole life to get where he is – running a restaurant with his two closest friends, no boss, and generally content. When his best friend Baldwin gets the gig of a lifetime, he asks Bobby to take over the restaurant while he’s gone. He’ll miss his friend, but he’s excited to put himself to the test. He can’t believe he’s getting the chance to finally run his own kitchen.

Cal Mayer is thirty and starting over. His last relationship was a failure. His job went down the drain. So when his cousin Pete, a.k.a Baldwin Powell celebrity chef, offers him a gig in his restaurant, he can’t help but to jump at the offer to reinvent himself.

Bobby and Cal don’t exactly hit it off—to put it lightly. Bobby resents getting Cal dumped in his lap. Cal doesn’t appreciate Bobby’s frosty attitude. They’re stuck together day and night, and their chemistry is undeniable… but will it be sweet summer love or a case of too many chefs in the kitchen?

REVIEW:

Bobby is getting a great opportunity – he’s getting out of New York City and starting a new life in a smaller town and helping his friends run a restaurant, with great success.  His friends are doing well enough that they are having to leave the restaurant to pursue these opportunities. Bobby knows he’ll do a good job of running the restaurant but an unforeseen wrench is thrown his way.  His friend’s cousin needs work & is put ‘in charge’ of the restaurant. Things don’t go as well for Bobby, who’s been denied running the show.

The descriptions of the food and restaurant process in this book are very drool-worthy. This hits just the right tone for a book about cooking, which I love to death. Bobby is a great character and you really feel for him. My conflict is that Cal isn’t as well drawn out and it’s difficult to understand him and his actions. Some of the things he does feel like out of left field and not fully justified. While one would think this is an enemies to lovers story, that section is very brief and Bobby is such a good guy, he really can’t keep it up. And the mechanics of running the restaurant and making meals take up a lot of the book, which is a good thing because it’s the part that is more interesting. The conflict is more condensed and the resolution almost not dealt with properly.

This is the second book in the series.  I’ve not read the first but it felt stand alone for me, though I’ve come to understand that the story of how the restaurant got started is in the first book and is very charming. My ranking is kind of mixture – I would have rated it lower for the story, but the food descriptions and restaurant experiences bump the book up to my 4 heart rating.

RATING: 

BUY LINK: 

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