GRR Review: Cooking Up Love by Gemma Brocato

Cooking Up Love by Gemma Brocato is an interesting romance tale with a bit of suspense thrown in, with the FMC having two wounds against her that are realistic without being melodramatic, but the mystery / intrigue was telegraphed a bit too early, in my opinion, to make it that much... less satisfying.

Jemima George was a personal chef to a star of a reality TV show and ready to marry love of her life, then her Aunt Caro died under strange circumstances and left her this quaint little cafe in New England town. Jem fully intended to just sell it and go back to her career, until she found her fiancee had been cheating on her for MONTHS, and the very handsome contractor Jack Kerrigan, who helped her cope with her claustrophobia, made a very convincing case that she should keep the cafe instead. However, a shady attorney, a dead brother, evil companies, a vengeful ex of Jack, and some items hidden in the cafe and the upstairs apartment, not to mention Jemima's inadequacy complex and claustrophobia, threaten to derail the growing attraction between the two.

This proves that you can mix intrigue with something as harmless as a simple cafe. Who'd thought a chef and a contractor could be involved in intrigue? Yet this author managed to pull it off, albeit not to full effect. Suspense is rather low, however, in this book. So don't read it for the suspense, read it for the romance.

Category: Contemporary / Suspense

Primary Plot: Chef who inherited a small cafe falls for the contractor; together they have to find why some people are really interested in this cafe...

Overall Rating:  4/5