Title: A Taste of Sage
Author: Yaffa S. Santos
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Publication date: May 19th, 2020
320 pages
4/5 stars
Goodreads Synopsis
Lumi Santana is a chef with a gift: she can perceive a person’s emotions by tasting their cooking. Despite being raised by a mother who taught her that dreams and true love were silly fairy tales, she puts her heart and savings into opening her own fusion restaurant in Upper Manhattan. The restaurant offers a mix of the Dominican cuisine she grew up with and other world cuisines she is inspired by.
When her eclectic venture fails, she is forced to take a position as sous chef at a staid, traditional French restaurant owned by Julien Dax, a celebrated chef known for his acid tongue as well as his brilliant smile. After he goes out of his way to bake a tart to prove her wrong in a dispute, she is so irritated by his smug attitude that she vows to herself never to taste his cooking.
But after she succumbs to the temptation and takes a bite one day and is overcome with shocking emotion, she finds herself beginning to crave his cooking and struggling to stay on task with her plan to save up and move on as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Julien’s obsessed secretary watches with gnashed teeth as they grow closer and becomes determined to get Lumi out of her way permanently.
Review
**Thank you to Harper Paperbacks, Netgalley, and Yaffa S. Santos for a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review**
Lumi is a chef who just opened up her own restaurant, Caraluna in New York City. Julien is a chef who has a highly successful restaurant, DAX. They both has VERY different cooking styles, and when Lumi’s restaurant goes under, she’s forced to accept a sous chef position at DAX working directly with Julien. Will Lumi’s influence have an effect on Julien’s overall demeanor in the kitchen? And will Julien change Lumi’s opinions on serious relationships? Read to find out!
What I found to be most interesting was Lumi’s ability to sense the emotions of whoever cooks the food she eats. It adds an interesting, fantastical element to this adult contemporary novel. I just wish there was more about it in the book, but it does affect the storyline pretty significantly.
I really enjoyed the banter between Lumi and Julien, and there is a bit of love at first sight as a trope. They balance each other well, and each mellows the other in different ways. Julien is such a sweet man under the hard exterior of ball busting head chef of a fancy French restaurant. The dichotomy within his personality is well done. Out of the two, he is my favorite due to something he does for Lumi about halfway through.
This book also made me SUPER hungry when I was reading because there was so much description of cooking!!
Happy reading, folks!
Baltimore Bibliophile 