I was in kind of a reading slump for the last couple of months, only reading comics when I’m reading at all. Recently I realised that I really needed to DNF my then-current read (A Tale of Two Princes by Eric Geron) and pick up something else from my digital TBR stack. And so I started on this book… and it’s really cute?
This book is about Dylan, a teenager working at his aunt’s Singaporean Chinese take-out, Wok Warriors. The previous year, Dylan and his mother agreed to enter a mooncake competition, but his mother passed away soon after that – now, he’s determined to enter the contest in her memory. Then he meets Theo, who is incredibly rich, and very charming, Dylan falls in instacrush – so of course, when Theo asks Dylan to be his fake date at a wedding, Dylan says yes. When he starts falling for Theo for real, though, Dylan has to decide on whether their romance is worth putting aside his culinary dreams for.
As a YA romance, it’s pretty standard – you get a meet cute (of sorts), a pretty quick falling in love sequence, the inevitable conflict, etc etc. It’s not the best I’ve read, but it’s still enjoyable. And I do enjoy the whole Crazy Rich Asianness of it all. What really sells the book to me, though, are the other relationships – Dylan’s family dynamics are fun to read, and I love how they love and support each other despite all their differences. The best part of this book, of course, is the food. Just the mention of sayur lodeh made my mouth water, because I haven’t had any in so long. And the description of various mooncakes makes me crave mooncakes. And! Yay for all the Southeast Asian (Singapore and Malaysia, to be precise) food and ingredient mentions!
This book will be published in May 2023.
ghostgrrrl reads 