Review: Chef's Choice

 


More trans romance! It brings me so much joy! Especially great to see T4T and transfemme representation because those are both things that don’t show up very often in any genre. The basic premise of the book is a pretty traditional fake-dating setup – Jean-Pierre needs a girlfriend in order to inherit his family’s culinary empire, and Luna needs money, so they pretend to be in a relationship. But the rest of the book was brilliantly original and avoided most of the repetitive plot elements that come up so frequently in fake-dating stories. I especially loved the ending. I won’t spoil it, but not only was it not where I expected it to go, it was just so filled with trans joy and screw-the-old-rich-people, it was absolutely lovely.

My biggest complaint is that the relationship development didn’t quite ring true to me. There were lovely elements, to be sure – Jean-Pierre nicknaming Luna Claire?? Adorable – but the transition from them being annoyed with one another to attracted to one another felt absent. It kind of seemed like Luna was always annoyed with Jean-Pierre right up until she decided she liked him. Not a deal-breaker for the book, but smoother development would have taken this book to the next step.

I did really love Jean-Pierre’s character development, though. His growth from being very isolated in his trans identity to finding queer community was really well done. Same goes for Luna – she wasn’t at all the one-dimensional trans woman obsessed with men and passing that is so often seen in media (not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that we never see anything different). She had a really nuanced relationship with gender, which I really liked. It was very distinct from the way Jean-Pierre understood his transness, which is so important because sometimes people assume trans people will automatically understand each other, and that just isn’t true. Also there’s a scene with Luna’s mom and a waiter that had me absolutely dying. Generally just a very sweet, joyful little romance.


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