The plot of a romance usually follows a recipe, but this one isn't the kind you can make from a box of Betty Crocker! No, no! This story is well planned, with artfully crafted conversations that are not your average icing on the proverbial cake. I'm a sucker for a concept story and Kiss My Cupcake is the most fun I've had reading! Blaire and Ronan are fun, flirty, and feisty, which make you want them to get to the kissing part, but the rest of the story holds up . . . the cake is not just a vehicle for the icing! Brilliant business sense, playful marketing, and social media contests help to feature what it takes for a small business to survive in the world of corporate banality. Delicious details make for a tasty tale of building a business while falling in love with the competition. Yum!

There is nothing particularly remarkable about this one. The rivalry at the beginning felt super forced, irrational and absurd. It's falling into that trope of the people that hate each other in the beginning and end up falling for each other.

I usually enjoy Helena Hunting's books because they're a mix of fun escape, a tad improbable, and quite steamy. Kiss My Cupcake, on the other hand, didn't quite give me what I was expecting. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, I just never really connected with this book. There wasn't a long-lasting conflict in here, and everything kept wrapping up so neatly the entire time.

I'm also personally not a fan of Quirky Girl™ protagonists made in the image of Zooey Deschanel, so it took me a while to warm up to Blaire, and even when there was a pinch more depth added, there still wasn't a lot going on.

I'm sad that I could fully embrace this novel like I have Hunting's others, but I'm definitely going to keep reading her work. You win some, you lose some.

I loved the chemistry between these two and this was such a fun concept. I can't say that I liked either of the main characters at the beginning, but they definitely grew on me. At places it started to drag a little, especially towards the end with the contest winning, but it was overall a fun read! I hope that Daphne and Lars get their own story.