2023-06-01
In Jaeon’s romance novel, an artist is torn between her editor boyfriend and a handsome chef.
Lydia “Lia” Zhang of San Willmore, California, doesn’t know where her Pine-Sol went. When good-looking Connor drops by with the misdelivered package, Lia’s life changes. Connor teaches cooking classes at the youth center next to Lia’s studio, where she teaches art classes and works on increasingly lucrative contracts for the webtoons she grew up loving. At only 21 years old, Lia’s dropped out of college to pursue her artistic dreams. She already has a boyfriend: Reed, an ambitious book editor gunning for a promotion. How can Connor fit into Lia’s life? Very easily, it turns out: The two share a love of jogging, and Connor teaches Lia how to cook a romantic dinner for Reed. As Reed grows more distant, blowing off dates in favor of work, and Lia finds herself confiding in Connor and bonding with his family, the young artist realizes she has an important choice to make: will she follow her head or her heart? Lia is a thoroughly engaging hero with considerable emotional baggage from her parents’ contentious divorce (“My mother would always love that man and I could shower her with all my love but it was only my father’s affection that she wanted. No matter how much I loved her, she always put her cheating and undeserving husband first”) and her total estrangement from them after Lia announced her plans to leave university. Both Reed, with his flashy car and presents of roses and jewelry, and Connor, with his sensitive nature and gift for food, are appealing love interests—and the dynamics Lia shares with each, and with her spitfire best friend, Isa, are worthy of any of the Chinese television dramas the hero loves to watch.
A sweetly engaging love triangle tale.
