Love & Other Disasters

Love & Other Disasters, Anita Kelly
384 pages, contemporary, nb/f
publishes January 25th, 2022

If I knew that romance novels could be just as cozy as cozy mysteries, I would have picked this one up a lot sooner! This story involves a nonbinary POV character dating a girl (also POV) at a cooking competition! Their romance is hot and heady and there are some sex scenes, which I wasn't expecting at all but was very pleased by (they're all good!). Something that I didn't like about this book is that I was really worried about the cooking competition and the main characters kind of ignored that for a while, and then it was suddenly a problem! Also there is a transphobic character which was :/ but the book dealt with it really well. 5 stars! 

This was SO cute, and it made me want to cook all the things.

There are aspects I loved about this book and some that left me wanting. I loved the nonbinary language. It was great being able to see they/them in actual writing format. I thought it was interesting that at no point in any of the dialogue was someone corrected for accidentally misgendering or stumbling where they start to say her instead of them, but correct themselves and apologize. I feel like this happens frequently when I've been in group conversations with some of my nb friends.
It felt like there was some missing angst in the situations the two main characters found themselves in. I wasn't gripped in wondering what would happen next because everything read as informational instead of emotional. It could have been the perspective shifts. The angst in romance is what makes it addicting. This was a good book, but it wasn't as great as it could have been imo.