The Bridge Back to You

The Bridge Back to You by Riss M. Neilson, 368 pages

When they were teens, Olivia and Carmello met and fell in love as they worked together in Celia's Place, Carmello's mother's restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island. Raised by activist parents who never stayed in one place long, Olivia finally found a sense of home in the restaurant, which provided her with stability and fed her desire to become a chef. At 20, however, Olivia left Providence to seek her food fortunes elsewhere, and while Carmello wanted to go with her, his loyalty to his mother and her health needs kept him home, and destroyed their relationship. A decade later, Celia has died after a long battle with cancer, leaving Olivia a 25% stake in the restaurant that she hasn't seen in years. While she's still drifting between jobs as a personal chef, Olivia has a bit of time on her hands, and decides to head back to Providence to see what she can do for Celia's Place... and perhaps reignite the relationship to which she compares all others.

Usually, a multicultural second chance romance with lots of droolworthy food, single parents, and good representation of living with mental and physical health issues is a slam-dunk recipe for me. And for the most part, this romance was excellent. HOWEVER, the plot devices related to Celia's will soured it for me, as all of it seemed contrived. But if you're able to look past that, this one is a fun read, though it will make you hungry.

Flirting with Disaster

Flirting with Disaster by Naina Kumar, 320 pages

Seven years ago, Meena and Nikhil spontaneously (AKA drunkenly) got married on a trip to Las Vegas, and while it was a bit of a shock to them both, they decided to give this marriage thing a go anyway. But now, Meena lives in DC, Nikhil lives in Houston, and it's been six years since they've spoken when Meena travels to Texas to make Nikhil sign the divorce papers she sent him. See, she has political ambitions, as well as a guy who wants to marry her, in DC, and all that's standing in the way is a signature. But just hours after she arrives in Houston, so does a hurricane that traps her with her estranged husband through the storm and subsequent flooding, and the forced proximity also forces some latent feelings back to the surface.

I'm always up for a good second-chance romance trope, but something about this one just didn't work for me. I don't know if it's the fact that Meena (a very capable and intelligent woman) was completely unaware of the hurricane that was heading toward Houston until well after she got there (wouldn't it have been on the news or talked about in the political circles she's part of, at least in passing?) or the fact that the whole problem could've been resolved if Meena and Nikhil had a single conversation at some point over the course of those 6 years apart or the fact that somehow Meena kept her marriage a secret from EVERYONE for that long... maybe it was all three. There are better romances out there.

The Pairing

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston, 411 pages

Theo and Kit had been best friends for years before they started dating. Four years ago, they tried to take a romantic food and wine tour of Europe, and a fight on the flight over ended their romance and they haven't spoken since. Now both of them have separately cashed in their vouchers for the tour at the last possible moment, and they're separately determined to make it through the trip as friends. And what better way to do that than create a competition over who can hook up with the most locals on the trip?

This isn't exactly the most likely setup for a romance novel, and there are certainly those who will balk at Theo and Kit's free-love, sex-positive vibes. However, as she always does, McQuiston creates characters that are endearing and flawed, and situations that are holy cow spicy, which may win over a different set of romance readers. Also, I particularly enjoyed Theo's character development, as someone coming out as nonbinary and finding their place in the world — it made me miss their point of view when it switched to Kit's POV for the second half of the book. But all in all, this is another winner from McQuiston.

Seconds

Seconds: A Graphic Novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley, 323 pages
A 2015 Top Ten Great Graphic Novel for Teens

Katie, a talented chef, is about to make one of her biggest dreams a reality with the opening of her own restaurant. Everyone at Seconds knows that she's leaving, but she's feeling kind of stuck between two places - between Seconds and her new place, between being a young adult and a real adult. After an accident that she inadvertently caused happens, Katie, feeling awful, half-remembers a dream of a mysterious figure sitting on top of her dresser telling her that if things go wrong, don't forget, before the figure jumps into her dresser drawer. Taking a look inside, she finds a small box containing one mushroom, a notebook, and a set of instructions on what to do for a second chance. She decides to try it, and while sleeping, she has a dream about the evening before where she makes all the right decisions and keeps the accident from happening. She's even more amazed when she awakes to discover that the accident never happened in real life. Excited by the thought of being able to do things over, Katie finds more mushrooms and begins using them whenever things go wrong, despite the warnings from the mysterious figure. Soon her world is practically unrecognizable and becoming more and more unstable. Can she fix it in time, or is she doomed?

Seconds is a fantastic story, and Bryan Lee O'Malley manages to capture that angst about getting older that seems to hit twenty-somethings perfectly in Katie. Her insecurity about her future and the decisions she is making is what drives her to keep using the mushrooms. And who wouldn't? Seconds is a much more serious story than Scott Pilgrim, but it's not without humor (Katie's constantly responding to the narrator, often out loud, which confuses the others). O'Malley's chibi-ish style is even more chibi here, as Katie is drawn almost comically petite compared to some of the other characters (especially waitress Hazel and ex-boyfriend Max), and there's a heavy dose of red in the coloring that almost makes the art glow. It's a good story about change and how second chances can be nice but can also make things worse.

(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge.)