~My Thoughts~
I didn’t know a whole lot about this book going in, but when I saw Romeo and Juliet with rival Vietnamese restaurants, I knew I had to read it! And though this wasn’t the most polished book I’ve ever read, I still enjoyed it.
What I mean by not the most polished was, I feel like it could’ve done with a few more rounds of editing as there were a lot of typos. I also found that the timeline didn’t always add up. This book is told with dual view-points and there were a couple times where the time-line got shuffled around a bit without any explanation. For example, if Linh’s chapter ended in the present, Bao’s might then take us back to a week before without telling the reader. And then with the romance, this book is a solid 400 pages long which didn’t really do it any favors as this meant that a lot of the book was then spent in the ‘are we together, are we not’ phase which I’m not a big fan of.
But it wasn’t all bad. I loved, loved, loved the food descriptions. Vietnamese is one of my favorite cuisines so every time I went to read this book I came away craving it! This author sure knows how to describe some amazing food. I was also pleasantly surprised by the historical elements of this book which really helped to save to the story and inspired me to do more research into. While the characters themselves weren’t particularly groundbreaking, I liked how we got to see them both find and grow into their purpose over the course of the book.
Overall, I thought this book was a lot of fun! I don’t think it’s for everyone, but if you like Vietnamese food I’d definitely recommend giving it a try. Happy Reading 🙂
The Art of Reading 