All Val Navarro wants is a night out dancing with her girlfriends. A night to not think about men, to let herself go and not think about her ex or the developers eager to snatch up her whole neighborhood, threatening to put her family’s heritage Puerto Rican restaurant out of business. And then she meets Philip; handsome, sexy, thoughtful… wealthy Philip Wagner, son of the very developer she’s fighting against.
To his credit, it doesn’t take Philip long at all to realize that he absolutely has to come clean. That no matter how much he likes Val - and he likes her very much indeed - there’s no way for them to build any sort of relationship if he starts it off with a lie. Val doesn’t want to like him, but she does respect his honesty, and when he proves to be open to hearing her out on her issues with the development, she starts to think that maybe they might have some kind of future after all.
Val and Philip are both great characters, but honestly, the real star of this romance is the FOOD. I was salivating half the time. Val’s a chef and pretty much all of her and Philip’s encounters (apart from the first) seem to be based around food. It’s a true foodie romance, and an excellent one, with a diverse and fascinating cast - amazing to see a lesbian character just casually existing in the first few pages of a Harlequin novel, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
A fantastic multi-cultural, enemies to lovers romance. I loved every bit of it. Five stars!
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title from the author.