Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake

Great British Bake-Off + single mama of a hilarious eight-year-old + love triangle + bi representation = love? Mostly?

Things I loved:
• Amelie, Rosaline's kid. She was very curious, and I hate to use the word precocious because that doesn't feel quite right. But rather, her mom was trying to figure out her life, and Amelie was pushing at some minor boundaries in a way that felt just a teensy bit exasperating, but in that way that parenthood is sometimes, rather than in an obnoxious look-how-cute-this-kid-is way.
• That Rosaline stands up for herself as a bisexual woman even when people are jerks about it, and that she seems to have mostly good boundaries around herself.
• Rosaline grows a lot in this book, and I always like growth arcs
• GBBS! It's such a delightful show IRL, and Hall really captures what one can imagine as the behind-the-scenes stuff of the fictitious version, Bake Expectations.
• The Bake Expectations cast. Most everyone was lovely and fun, and I especially loved Anvita. (She is “excellent and sexy!”)
• The dialogue was fantastic.
• Even that of the potty-mouthed-is-too-clean-a-word-to-use producer who never stopped cussing at people to stop ruining her wonderful show. It made me chuckle.
• I did laugh out loud a lot.

Things I hated:
• OK hate is kind of a strong word, but it bothered me that I never knew how to pronounce Rosaline's name. She said to someone that she was named after a Shakespearean nun, and I don't remember having read whatever play that was, but I do remember a Rosalind from a different play, so then I couldn't figure out if it was “rose-a-leen” or “roz-a-lyn” and I drove myself crazy using them interchangeably in my head the whole time.
• Rosaline's parents. I get it, you put all these expectations on your kid based on your own life experiences, but despite their love for their granddaughter, they treated Rosaline mostly like shit. They were rude and cruel to Rosaline's friends, discounted her sexuality, and never listened to what she really wanted in life. And of course, I have complicated feelings about that because they were also bankrolling Rosaline's life, since our heroine only worked part time, and it seemed like she just had never gotten onto her feet in the eight years since she'd had a child? Which doesn't make any of the parents' behavior better, but at least I ... understand? I hate that!

Things I liked until I hated them:
• Alain. Alain Alain Alain. They had such great banter in the beginning, and he seemed like a great guy if a bit pretentious, until he turned into a colossal douche-a-saur. And their mediocre relationship went on WAYYYYYY too long.
• I was prepared to give Liv the benefit of the doubt even though I got weird feelings about her and Alain the whole time. I should have trusted those feelings.

CW: biphobia, sexual assault, gaslighting, language