Love & Other Disasters

Love & Other Disasters, Anita Kelly
384 pages, contemporary, nb/f
publishes January 25th, 2022

If I knew that romance novels could be just as cozy as cozy mysteries, I would have picked this one up a lot sooner! This story involves a nonbinary POV character dating a girl (also POV) at a cooking competition! Their romance is hot and heady and there are some sex scenes, which I wasn't expecting at all but was very pleased by (they're all good!). Something that I didn't like about this book is that I was really worried about the cooking competition and the main characters kind of ignored that for a while, and then it was suddenly a problem! Also there is a transphobic character which was :/ but the book dealt with it really well. 5 stars! 

There are aspects I loved about this book and some that left me wanting. I loved the nonbinary language. It was great being able to see they/them in actual writing format. I thought it was interesting that at no point in any of the dialogue was someone corrected for accidentally misgendering or stumbling where they start to say her instead of them, but correct themselves and apologize. I feel like this happens frequently when I've been in group conversations with some of my nb friends.
It felt like there was some missing angst in the situations the two main characters found themselves in. I wasn't gripped in wondering what would happen next because everything read as informational instead of emotional. It could have been the perspective shifts. The angst in romance is what makes it addicting. This was a good book, but it wasn't as great as it could have been imo.

I'm pretty sure this is my first reading experience that features a nonbinary character; it admittedly took me a bit to get the hang of the singular they pronoun. This also might have been the first romance I've read where one of the MCs is divorced.

I used to watch Top Chef and Master Chef and I still watch the Great British Baking Show, so I loved the behind-the-scenes details of a fictitious reality cooking show, but I wish there had been a little more about the foooooood. I like foooood. I like hearing about foood! I like romance too (and btw the foodie sex was awesomely written), but a lot of the actual reality show parts seemed very much to be secondary to the friends-to-lovers getting to know each other and mostly eschewing the other contestants on the show.

Mostly this worked well and didn't annoy me because Dahlia and London treated each other like grownups who could handle the truth even when things were rough, even though of course there's tension when (not a spoiler, true of every reality show) There Can Only Be One Winner.

I appreciated their familial relationships as well, for both characters. Several good (to my mind) representations of trans/queer folks, and the people who love them. (Folx? I keep seeing it spelled with an X, but I'm not sure why, since the regular spelling isn't binary.) Yes, there is some transphobia, but it is hinted at while still maintaining the characters' chosen pronouns, and that was a thoughtful touch.

I tore through this in two days, which might be the fastest I've read anything in months, so there's that.