Love on the Menu by Mimi Deb

Meet-cute, bad decisions, pen-pals

2.5 stars

 

Gia has a list of bold moves to change her life. Ben is stuck in a rut, hiding his dreams away. Joined as accidental pen-pals by fate (or a takeaway order), these two slowly get to know each other as they navigate their problems and transform their lives.

Though the story is intriguing and overall pretty cute, I feel like there was a lot of distractions and jumping around. The focus is heavy on some side characters, like Jay or Matt, while also only sharing very little about said characters and then suddenly a lot shared all at once. Aside from Gia and Ben, I didn’t get the impression that I got to know anyone. 

Speaking of the main characters, Ben is a good one. He’s a little indecisive but clearly striving for better and moving forward, albeit at his own pace. I love his interactions with the people at the takeaway and his football team. Gia, on the other hand, kind of feels like a bit of a mess. A sweet, semi-optimistic character, but despite her list she tends to make all the same choices and wonder why nothing changes. There’s also a lot of alcohol interplay - Ben is a recovering alcoholic while Gia is almost always drinking - and that contrast is striking and somewhat uncomfortable. 

The writing and the concept are good, and I do love the letters back and forth and the inclusion of Gia’s receipts. There are several scenes that I felt were very well done and I wanted them to stretch out further, but on the other hand there were some I thought could have been excluded entirely. Overall, this was not my type of story. 

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Special thank you to Avon Books UK and Netgalley for sharing an e-ARC of this book to read and review. Love on the Menu was released as an e-book on April 13th, and will be released in paperback later this year.