Thomas, Sherry - Delicious

Verity Durant is the notorious and famed cook of Bertie Somerset: notorious for her affairs and famed for her food, which can invoke the diner's most cherished memory in a bite. And when Bertie dies, she ends up in the life of the one man she swore not to romance ten years ago—Bertie's brother Stuart.

Thomas' first book has some excellent flashback angst, which is a narrative kink of mine (hello manga!), but it fell a little flat when it came to the present-day. This book is much improved; the flashbacks take up less of the plot and the majority of the character development and angst happens in the present. I also liked the secondary couple much better, although that may be my personal propensity toward cynical, practical women and the men who love them. I'm not certain that the secondary couple got much more depth than the secondary couple did in Private Arrangements, but since it supplied me with even more meaningful looks indecipherable to the heroine and obvious to the reader and lots more angst, I was fine with that.

I will note that though I liked the inclusion of homosexuality, I'm not entirely sure I like how it was treated—window dressing and a potential obstacle in the face of forever heterosexual romances in the genre.

Like her first book, Thomas' ending still felt a little too happy for me. On the other hand, it wasn't nearly as artificial as that of Private Arrangements; the pieces were set up ahead of time, and the reader is duly warned in the first chapter that it's a fairy tale of sorts.

On a whole, this is a much more polished second book, and I'm hoping that Thomas' third is even better when it comes to the ending and some of the sex (Thomas seems to do foreplay and UST much, much better than actual sex). Plus, the third one stars a female doctor with a dramatic white streak who is cold and tormented! I love her already.

And if Thomas' propensity for angst, flashbacks, decidedly-not-ingenue heroines, and un-alpha males weren't enough, this book is full of (metaphorical) food porn as well! It gave me incredible cravings for dainty French pastries, particularly for madeleines.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review

More book loot!

Aside from my manga loot, which I am still gloating about, so far I have bought:

- Sherry Thomas, Delicious, even though I could have gotten it in CA, just because I couldn't wait any longer to read it.

- John Makeham and A-Chin Hsiau, eds., Cultural, Ethnic, and Political Nationalism in Contemporary Taiwan: Bentuhua

- Patti Gully, Sisters of Heaven: China's Barnstorming Aviatrixes: Modernity, Feminism, and Popular Imagination in Asia and the West. Chinese aviatrixes! How could I refuse?

- Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman Native Other

- Celine Parrenas Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene

- Kathleen Duey, Skin Hunger, as it was recced by both coffeeandink and rachelmanija

- Maria Luisa Bombal, New Islands and Other Stories, as recced by Mely

- Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City, recced by Mely and out of interest from Lust Caution

- Laura Esquivel, Swift as Desire, since I'm liking Like Water for Chocolate so far

- Derek Walcott, The Odyssey, as recced by Mely

- Megan Chance, The Spiritualist, as I am still hoping that something in her general historical fiction will be as good as her genre romances

- Scott Westerfeld, The Risen Empire, because it's trade PB and mine is the HB and my second book in the series is mass market, and the discrepancy drives me crazy. Crazy!

- Marie Brennan, Midnight Never Come, as recced by yhlee and coniraya

Comment and tell me about any of them!