Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Book Review: "Best Served Hot" by Amanda Elliot

In Amanda Elliot's follow-up to Sadie on a Plate, the heat gets turned up when two restaurant critics team up.⁣

⁣ Julie loves being a restaurant reviewer on social media. She works as an executive assistant in order to support her side gig as @JulieZeeEatsNYC, and her more than 50,000 followers love her food photos and videos.

⁣ ⁣ What Julie wants more than anything is an actual job as a restaurant reviewer for a newspaper, and her dream job is to work at the New York Scroll. But when the Scroll doesn’t even contact her after receiving her application, and they hire Bennett Wright (whose mom is friends with the paper’s CEO) instead, she’s angry and hurt.⁣

⁣ While at a food festival in Central Park, Julie runs into Bennett, and their encounter devolves into Julie confronting him for his snobby attitude toward social media and those who use it for restaurant/food reviews. Her video footage of their confrontation sees her follower count jump dramatically—and it brings more traffic to Scroll's social media, too.⁣

⁣ Seeing benefit for both of them, Bennett proposes that they collaborate. They’ll both visit the same restaurants at the same time and contrast their approaches and opinions. And after some initial hijinks, they start to enjoy each other’s company, and they learn from each other.⁣ Of course, the more they collaborate, the more the chemistry intensifies. Is this a reservation for love or disaster?⁣

⁣ I love books about food and restaurants, so this was right up my alley. I loved Sadie on a Plate (and Sadie makes a cameo in this book), and this is fun, steamy, and romantic. I enjoyed the discussion about social media and the battle of print vs. internet, too.

⁣ Thanks so much to NetGalley and Berkley for the advance copy! The book publishes 2/21/2023!⁣

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