Review: Anita Kelly’s LOVE & OTHER DISASTERS.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

📖 Q: if you had to make one signature dish to show who you are on a reality tv cooking show what would it be? Mine would be bruschetta with thick crusty bread. I would likely be kicked off right away 😆.

Food love, self-love, love-for-another love. Anita Kelly’s Love & Other Disasters had me swimming in—I’m gonna say it again, love—& it was just wonderful.

I’m trash for foodie romances, especially when they involve a competition. The enticing food descriptions 🤤 , the stakes of it all, how the leads express themselves through food, the ways they show care through every morsel…& those things were reflected in my reading of this book.

Dahlia Woodson is pretty recently divorced & wants to use the cash from winning reality tv show Chef’s Special—a show featuring amateur chefs—to apply to her debt. Stuck in a rut, living a life that she doesn’t love, she believes in herself when (almost) everyone else thinks she’s a long shot.

London Parker wants to open an LGBTQ nonprofit with the winnings. For them, the show offers the extra challenge of telling viewers that their pronouns are they/them, all the while being aware that those are pronouns their own dad refuses to use.

Dahlia & London’s first couple of interactions are so cute & when Dahlia repeatedly keeps being exactly who she is—someone who is initially only reluctantly appreciated by London 😆😆—my heart squeezed.

Soon the chemistry between them gets as hot & vital as oil warming in a pan (one point for that food analogy 😆), although it takes a while for Dahlia to see/recognize the romantic nature of it & it takes even longer for them to act on.

With a hilarious moment involving a cow, a heartwarming story that gives everything a person could want in a romance, lovely full circle closing lines, & two leads whom it’s a pleasure to root for, Love & Other Disasters is soothing & hot & altogether satisfactory.

5 ⭐️. Release date: 01/18


CW: transphobia



[ID: an ebook rests on an aqua pot holder. To the upper left is a white bowl w/ a floral pattern holding an onion; to the upper right is a baguette on a white towel; & to the right of the ebook is a dark aqua ramekin w/ red & orange grape tomatoes inside.]