Beauty and the Feast Review

Beauty and the Feast - Julia Rachel Barrett

Eva Raines is an uncomplicated country girl who's all about food. Eva moves to the Napa Valley where her culinary skills come to the attention of the owners of a start-up, All Things to All People, and Eva finds her niche as a personal chef. Now all she needs is a man as perfect as her cooking, but she has serious doubts that such a creature exists.

When wealthy entrepreneur, winery owner, and noted Lothario, Gabriel Abbott, makes plans to seduce his flavor of the month, his assistant hires All Things to All People to cater a gourmet dinner. Eva expects to use her way with food to showcase the startup. What she unexpectedly discovers is that her culinary skills showcase far more.

Once Gabriel finds himself seduced by Eva's voice, and the sensual flavors and textures of her food, his previous plans are quickly forgotten. He begins to obsess about meeting his little chef in person. But when Eva and Gabe finally come face to face, the question is, how hot will their fire burn.

 

Review

 

Barrett creates a really great heroine in this book who is foul mouthed, sweet, domestic, and a lot of fun. Our hero is dreamy, rags from riches, and steadfast. He is a little shallow at first but he grows. This love story uses food a foreplay as the heroine is a personal chef.

 

There is a lot of what I call food porn in this book which is very detailed food descriptions ala Mr. Petermen's catalogue in Seinfeld. For me, these moments went on a bit too long but for other readers they could make the book a big hit!The secondary characters are great.

 

The sexy times are very well done and frequent. I didn't need the side plot of the jealous woman and would have rather had more character development of Gabe and more real couple time but the show down with the jealous one was funny.

 

The book dragged in few places but was overall engaging and charming. I will definitely check out more books by this writer!