A Taste for Love
Ratings5
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings5
Average rating4.2
For fans of Jenny Han, Jane Austen, and The Great British Baking Show, A Taste for Love, is a delicious rom com about first love, familial expectations, and making the perfect bao. To her friends, high school senior Liza Yang is nearly perfect. Smart, kind, and pretty, she dreams big and never shies away from a challenge. But to her mom, Liza is anything but. Compared to her older sister Jeannie, Liza is stubborn, rebellious, and worst of all, determined to push back against all of Mrs. Yang's traditional values, especially when it comes to dating. The one thing mother and daughter do agree on is their love of baking. Mrs. Yang is the owner of Houston's popular Yin & Yang Bakery. With college just around the corner, Liza agrees to help out at the bakery's annual junior competition to prove to her mom that she's more than her rebellious tendencies once and for all. But when Liza arrives on the first day of the bake-off, she realizes there's a catch: all of the contestants are young Asian American men her mother has handpicked for Liza to date. The bachelorette situation Liza has found herself in is made even worse when she happens to be grudgingly attracted to one of the contestants; the stoic, impenetrable, annoyingly hot James Wong. As she battles against her feelings for James, and for her mother's approval, Liza begins to realize there's no tried and true recipe for love.
Reviews with the most likes.
[excerpt from my review which you can find at bookblubbs.wordpress.com]
“...Before I get into the review, there's something I want to talk about regarding the other reviews for this book, especially the three-star reviews that disliked that the mother never changed and that she still remained stubborn and unrelenting. This is honestly one of the reasons why I don't like it when people who aren't privy to these things review it based on their own white backgrounds and how they have come to perceive how (white) parents should be.
I'll give you a quick tldr: the mom DID change for the better. It's minuscule, but it's there. Trying to change an Asian parent in their ways is like trying to move a mountain. It's literally impossible. Liza got through to her mom, and even though the mom didn't apologize for shit (and they never do) the regret for how she's treated Liza did show in the third or second to last chapter. Maybe it's because I myself can see the changes due to being Taiwanese-American myself, but I'm glad that this book was realistic and not fantasizing on how parents in YA change attitudes overnight. In fact, I would've been pissed given that this book is supposed to reflect how it is to be living with that kind of mother...”
