Can't Stand the Heat

For sharp-tongued food critic Miranda Wake, the chance to spend a month in Adam Temple’s kitchen to write an exposé is a journalistic dream come true. Surely Miranda can find a way to cut the hotshot chef down to size once she learns what really goes on at his trendy Manhattan restaurant. But she never expected Adam to find out her most embarrassing secret: she has no idea how to cook.

Adam’s not about to have his reputation burned by a critic who doesn’t even know the difference between poaching and paring. He’ll just have to give the tempting redhead a few private lessons of his own—teaching her what it means to cook with passion…and doing more with his hands than simply preparing sumptuous food.

Can't Stand the Heat is one of those books that I just inhaled. I basically read it in one sitting, I was interrupted several times by the children, the joys of of March break. The book is also the first book of a series, A Recipe for Love, by Louisa Edwards. I finished reading it last week and completely forgot to post my thoughts right away. It's been one of those weeks...

Meet Miranda, a food critic who wants to break into the non-fiction publishing world. The only problem is that she keeps getting rejected. Her brother comes back home after leaving a good university, and she knows there's something behind that he's not telling. She then heads out to an opening of a new restaurant, where she gets slightly tipsy and makes a deal with the restaurants' chef. The deal she has to spend time in the kitchen, learn the ropes for a month. There's this little problem she has no idea how to cook.

You have all the ingredients in this book: great characters, great setting, awesome dialogue, the chemistry is there, there's conflict and tension and the secondary story is wonderful. At times I was more interested on what was going on with Frankie and Jess than with Miranda and Adam. I thought the dialogue was very good, it had me giggling and holding on to peals of laughter...didn't want the people around me to think I was crazy.

I'm looking forward on reading the second book of the series, On The Steamy Side.

Can't Stand the Heat by Louisa Edwards (4/5) Contemporary Romance; Published: St. Martin's Paperbacks (9/09); New Author; Series: # 1, A Recipe for Love; Books 2010 (35);