Rowena’s review of Taste Test by Kelly Fiore.

If you can grill it, smoke it, or fry it, Nora Henderson knows all about it. She’s been basting baby back ribs and pulling pork at her father’s barbeque joint since she was tall enough to reach the counter. When she’s accepted to Taste Test, a reality-television teen cooking competition, Nora can’t wait to leave her humble hometown behind, even if it means saying good-bye to her dad and her best friend, Billy. Once she’s on set, run-ins with her high-society roommate and the maddeningly handsome—not to mention talented—son of a famous chef, Christian Van Lorten, mean Nora must work even harder to prove herself. But as mysterious accidents plague the kitchen arena, protecting her heart from one annoyingly charming fellow contestant in particular becomes the least of her concerns. Someone is conducting real-life eliminations, and if Nora doesn’t figure out who, she could be next to get chopped for good.

With romance and intrigue as delectable as the winning recipes included in the story, this debut novel will be devoured by all.

I love food.  I love to cook, to bake and to find recipes for dishes I want to try out.  What I’m not a fan of are those cooking challenge shows…except for Cupcake Wars.  I love that show but the pressure on those cooking challenges shows like Top Chef, Master Chef and Hell’s Kitchen are too much for me.  I’m always on pins and needles and well, I can’t handle it so I don’t watch them.  So I have no idea why I wanted to read this book so much, only that I did.

And I liked it.

I thought it was cute.  The romance that sprouted to life between Christian and Nora was unexpectedly sweet and even when they were driving me crazy, I liked them.  I liked their story and the way that they came together.

Nora comes from a modest background.  It’s just her and her father, who owns a BBQ joint back home and she knows her way around a kitchen.  She watches Taste Test and likes to think about the different ways that she’d handle each challenge so after a talk with her best friend Billy, she decides that she’s going to try to get on the show.  She wasn’t expecting to get on but she does and the whole experience changes her entire life.

When we first meet Christian, he is a complete snob.  He laughs at Nora and is so cocky and arrogant about winning the show that it should have put him off but it didn’t.  Fiore did a great job of straddling that douche bag line with Christian without actually going over it.  I really came to love the heck out of Christian.  He was such a good kid that I was really glad that Nora finally got over herself and her reservations and gave Christian a try.  Their romance wasn’t easy and it was fraught with teenage angst but in the end, I was thoroughly satisfied with the book as a whole.

Overall, Nora was a solid character.  She was likable.  She was relatable.  But there were times when I wanted to wring her neck.  Her attitude sometimes got on my nerves but you can see the growth in her character as the book wore on.  You can see her learning and growing and in the end, she turned out to be the girl that I hoped she’d be in the beginning.  Her relationship with Christian was another thing that grew over the course of the book and seeing them bicker their way toward finally letting themselves be happy together was well worth the emotional roller coaster.

There were a few things that I thought were cheesy, but for the most part I liked the book.  I’m glad that I read it and I think other fans of YA contemporary novels will enjoy this one.

Grade: 3.5 out of 5

This book is available from Walkers Children. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.