This was a super cute book. It was a retelling of Pride & prejudice mixed with The Great British Baking Show. I loved reading about the bakeries and overall it was an adorable Young adult contemporary I would recommend!

Cute and fun YA rom-com that takes place mostly within the setting of a baking challenge. Check it out if you’re looking for something light and sweet. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my gifted copy!

A Taste for Love was an adorable and hunger-inducing romance that felt a little like half of the plot of Netflix's The Princess Switch and the other half Great British Bake-Off, which was shamelessly name dropped and refenced so often it almost felt like an advertisement. Protagonist Liza faces a common struggle of young women of color, wanting to be independent and make her own choices while not upsetting her parents or the culture they raised her in. Navigating her dream career and dating prospects plays out exactly how you expect it to, but it was a fun ride nonetheless.

Liza's friends Grace and Sarah were a fun addition to the cast and helped flesh out the varying sides of Liza's struggles. Her sister Jennie was also a fun subversion of the golden child trope.

I found myself wishing James were slightly more charming. After his introduction and an incident later in the book, I found him less likable than his cousin Ben, which may have helped add depth to his character but ultimately just made me leery of him overall.

The dramatics become a little convoluted at the climax of the story, and it all felt a little odd considering the mostly lighthearted tone of the reset of the book.

The pop-culture references were fun, though I have a feeling some will age much more poorly than others.

Other notable things I liked were the name-drops of other Asian authors, the detailed food descriptions that desperately made me want to go to a bakery, and the way Liza handles casual microagressions. Overall, a pleasant, fun, quick read.

Jennifer Yen bakes a tasty YA romance, combining loyal friends and family, romantic double dates, and lots and lots of tasty food. This book is a clean, sweet read for teens that enjoy foodie pics and unexpected romance.
As a native Houstonian, it was fun to read this novel, set in Houston, that describes a lot of our cities landmarks, like Hermann Park and the Waterwall in the Galleria area.
Thanks for the ARC! We look forward to getting this in our high school library soon.

A super cute coming of age romance perfect for younger readers. A bit too young for me but maybe better for high school readers.

What a delight of a book. A Taste For Love is the most fun mix of Great British Bake Off and Pride and Prejudice that I never knew I wanted. I mean you say Great British Bake Off and I’m there and the same for Pride and Prejudice adaptations but to say that it’s got both then I am here with bells on and extremely excited.
Like Liza, I’ve watched all of GBBO many times so having this new alternative is a lovely breath of fresh air. In addition to being a GBBO addict, i’m also an extremely amature baker and i loved reading about the recipes and Liza’s technical challenges. Yes, it meant this was not a book to read while hungry but it was so delicious all the same and definitely had me craving boba tea.
I also enjoyed the twist on pride and prejudice and how it was more loosely inspired so Jennifer Yen was free to take more liberties. I enjoyed the ways that Yen could twist and subvert the formula. It made it all more fun and exciting and in this way I was kept on my toes on what elements might be incorporated. This meant when certain characters were introduced I was like “Hello Bingley and Darcy!” while later on I’m sitting there trying to figure out if one of the characters is secretly a Wickham. It was a nice dimension to add to it that almost made it a bit of a game. Ultimately though it worked in Yen’s favor that it wasn’t a carbon copy of Pride and Prejudice. I love the original, but when there is no wiggle room for originality or creativity, it can feel stale and predictable. Yen found the perfect sweet spot of playing on the tropes and archetypes of the story while keeping the story fresh and feeling unique and very much her own at the same time.
There were a lot of different things at play here, Liza juggling familial obligation and being true to herself, trying to balance wanting a love that made her happy versus bucking up against her mom’s strict check list as well as trying not to just dismiss guys because they met the check list. This was the story also of friendship and family restaurants, relaxing expectations, and going for what you want. All in all this book was lovely and got a chef’s kiss from me.

5/5⭐️ to A Taste for Love by Jennifer Yen! Thank you very much to Penguin Teen Canada for an early egalley for review!
This was an absolute delight of a book! We got loveable characters, great family dynamics, a cute romance, a mystery, and BAKING!!! A super engaging story from page one due to the characters, writing, and a super fun baking competition. I loved Liza as a MC, especially with her love of baking & her relationship with her parents & sister! Some of my favourite scenes are when she is baking with her mom in their store and dreaming up new recipes. Liza is also divided between her parents expectations & dreams for her, and what Liza has planned for herself. One thing in particular is who she’ll date: her Mom keeps setting her up with “good” Taiwanese-American boys who Liza has no connection with. Enter the baking competition that their shop hosts for teens. This year Liza’s mom invites her to co-host the competition, and she is super excited! Only when day one comes, all the competitors are Taiwanese-American boys around her age, and their baking skills are not nearly up to par with previous years. Yes, her mom set this up! Liza ends up befriending a couple boys from the competition, which was so great to see! Then sabotage enters the competition, and this new group of friends must work together to figure it out! I found this aspect of the story so interesting and fun! There is a little mistrust between the new friends since the boys are new to town, and it was great to see them work through this. It also introduced such a cute romantic relationship, which I was behind 100%. I also really enjoyed Liza’s relationship with her sister, who is Iiving in NYC as a model. She feels that because of her sister, she has to be the perfect daughter. Liza is also worried for her sister as the modelling industry is brutal, and during a visit she suspects her sister might have some disordered eating practices. This definitely adds some tension between them, but I could still feel their sister bond.

I now a big fan of Jennifer Yen, and I’d highly recommend y’all checking out this book!

This was so cute!! I loved all the food descriptions and the baking competition. It really made me hungry!

This book was everything I could have dreamed of. As a home baker, I could not imagine a book more suited to my interests. I had so so so much fun diving into this story and learning more about Liza and her love interest(s) (no spoilers haha). I also really enjoyed learning more about Asian culture and baking! The baking competition was perfect and also a disaster at the same time. Exactly what you want to hear if you're anything like myself. I also loved how the book did not limit itself to simply bright and happy topics. There are discussions of important and deep things in this book, that make it hang on to you longer than just a silly love story. This is definitely something I will read again one day, hopefully soon. For now, it's a 4.5/5 stars. Highly recommend!

Thanks for Penguin and NetGalley for providing me a digital ARC to review for my classroom. I would definitely recommend this to my students as a good example of taking a classic story and pulling it into today's world. I'm not a huge Pride and Prejudice fan, but this retelling really works for me. The baking competition aspect and the mother/daughter relationship worked well for me. It was an adorable, fun read and I will definitely recommend it to others.

3.5/5 Stars

Liza Yang is deemed perfect by her classmates. Her mother thinks otherwise. Compared to her older sister, Liza is argumentative and rebellious, always pushing back on her mother's traditional views, especially when it comes to dating a nice Asian boy. The one thing they bond over is baking. Liza agrees to help her mother with the annual baking competition. She is surprised, and more than a little angry when she arrives the first day only to realize that every contestant is a young Asian American boy her mother has handpicked as a possible suitor.

This was an enemies to lovers story, that I thought was really cute! I had no idea that it was a Pride and Prejudice retelling, but after discovering this I can definitely see the parallels. I really liked the main character, she was very likeable and fun to get to know. I wish there was more of a focus on the actual baking competition, rather than the drama in the multiple relationships. The competition is one of the main things in the book, but doesn't actually begin until halfway through the book. I was definitely a bigger fan of the friendship and sister bonds, rather than the romance. I liked the exploration of the mother/daughter relationship. The plot was definitely predictable, but it was still a lot of fun.

Overall, a cute read, with a great main character.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Would you believe I have never read/seen Pride and Prejudice? So, I went into this knowing I couldn't compare. Let me just say this: I'm HERE for the baking and cooking books as of late. I just love them. Food is my love language and I love to read about it.

This is a super cute YA book about a teenager (Liza) who have parents that work in a bakery. Every year, Liza's mother hosts a baking contest and Liza is asked to help judge the results... not realizing, at first, that it's really a set up by her mother to find her a date/true love. All the contestants are Asian young men.

I enjoyed the relationships and family dynamics in this book. They were much different from the way I grew up, especially between mother and daughter.

The only part of this book I felt was strange was how magically certain people kept running into each other! What are the chances that someone from Texas goes to NYC and runs into another friend from Texas (also visiting NYC) on the street? Have you been to NYC? Then these same people are in the baking competition and someone in the crowd (who lives across the country) who some of the bakers have known for a long time (and we learn have problems with) is in the audience? These things just don't happen. I digress...

It was a predictable book but that's okay, I knew it would be and most of the books I read are. I actually learned a lot about Asian baked goods, foods and the process of baking itself. Highly recommend for a cute read!

Grab your apron, preheat the oven, and get ready for a delightfully sweet and mouthwatering YA take on Pride and Prejudice! Liza Yang dreams of going to culinary school, but her parents want her to think beyond their family-owned bakery and restaurant. When Liza scores a place as a judge for the local baking competition, she thinks she might finally have a way to work towards her dream...until she realizes her mother has set up the competition as a not-so-sneaky matchmaking service to find Liza a good Asian boyfriend. To make matters worse, the star competitor is James, Liza's recently acquired and inconveniently hot nemesis. Pride & Prejudice fans will quickly anticipate how the plot unfolds through Jennifer Yen's clever nods to the original Austen masterpiece, along with a heaping cup of her own witty banter, delicious descriptions of foods, and the romantic tension between the characters. Diehard YA fans will also love all the fangirl nods Yen sneaks in to favorite authors and books. A Taste for Love hits the spot for sweet romance.

I was offered a review copy of <i>A Taste for Love</i> by Netgalley and I accepted, because I'm looking for more fun, upbeat YA to counteract the grimdark/dystopia trend we've had going on the last few years. It had cute characters, a fun plot, and lots of delicious food. I enjoyed it tremendously.

As the title suggests, <i>A Taste for Love</i> leans really hard into the food thing. The plot revolves around food. The characters are cooks and bakers and spend all their time in kitchens and restaurants. Even the descriptions are peppered with food metaphors. This is a) fun and b) liable to make you very, very hungry. Counterintuitively, there are no recipes included with the novel (hey publisher, can the release version have recipes?) so I recommend knowing ahead of time the location and opening hours of your local Chinese restaurant and bubble tea shop.

<i>A Taste for Love</i> also leans fairly hard in the Jane Austen direction as well. This was kind of surprising to me because when the blurbs mentioned it I assumed they meant tonally (everything with a couple that starts out hating each other gets compared to <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> these days) but as I was reading there were definite nods to the plot of P&P. Not in a way that forces the story into well worn wheel ruts but in a way where fans get an extra fun dimension of 'oh yeah, her mom is totally channeling Mrs. Bennett here' and 'oh snap he just pulled a Mr. Wickham.'

In short <i>A Taste for Love</i> is exactly what I needed right now, and since we've all been living the same year I think it's probably exactly what YOU need right now too. I'll definitely be getting it for the library.

A huge thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Teen for the ARC copy of this ebook!

I thought this book was adorable, fun to read and checked a lot of boxes that I love in a YA contemporary:

Enemies to lovers trope
Overbearing parent trying to set their child up
Focus on cooking, specifically a cooking competition if you’re into that
A lot of mentions of baked goods, tea, buns, and more – you’ll be hungry from start to finish
Quick, lighthearted read
It also has some Asian representation, and the MC is able to help a friend of hers learn how to avoid being offensive or unintentionally white-centric.

Very cute and definitely worth picking it up!

A fun romance mashup for fans of the British Baking Show and The Bachelorette. Liza stands at the threshold of adulthood, but will she get to choose the direction her life takes from here? With a meddling mom and a "perfect" older sister to follow behind, Liza's dreams of pursuing her passion for baking seem unlikely to come true.

Liza wants nothing more but to live her own life, date who she wants and bake, all things her strict mother disapproves of. After a messy breakup with her secret boyfriend, Liza decides to try and follow her mom's rules in the hopes to prove that she should be able to make her own choices and that she knows her own heart.

It is now an irrefutable fact that I love books with cooking/eating as a big part of the plot- and this was another prime example. Seriously, this book made me so hungry! The level of description included in the baking and the eating just made me salivate the entire time I was reading and this was legit a cornucopia of all my favorite foods collected in one convenient book format. Just thinking of the pastries (mmm custard steamed buns...) right now makes me want to drool- or take a trip to the local bakery to get a bun...mmm.

Overall this was adorable, fast and fun, filled with family drama, romantic relationship conflicts, an intense baking competition, coming of age identity issues, fully detailed descriptions of yummy treats, a boba addiction (which I can fully get behind), and I enjoyed the ride. This is the perfect read for anyone who wants a cute YA contemporary romance high on drama and low on heat but with quirky characters and great friendships

A Taste for Love is a cute, charming YA rom-com that I really enjoyed! Liza Yang is such a well-rounded, realistic character, and I loved her passion for baking, her frequent trips to get boba, and her relationships with her family and friends. I liked the way that her friendships with Grace and Sarah differed and had room for growth. It also filled my heart with joy to see it mentioned that Liza loved watching a Chinese drama because I can't recall ever encountering this sort of detail in any YA book before. Jennifer Yen even drops the names of the actors! Although the descriptions of food were wonderful, the way the baking contest unfolded, especially with some contestants that weren't all that qualified, felt a little far-fetched. I also wasn't that invested in the relationship between Liza and her love interest, James, but overall I had a lot of fun reading this.

What a cute little novel this was!
I enjoyed every single page, and I wish it got continuation, even though the story had very clear end.

Liza was amazing narrator, I really enjoyed her sense of humour, and I just like the author's voice.
It was simple, written in first person, easy to read and I finished a book very quickly.

My favourite part was the family aspect, and I see why it was compared to To All the Boys I Loved Before.
However, it stands as it's own, unique story pretty well, even if it is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice.
Also, it is perfect for cooking show fans.
If you don't watch that kind of entertainment (like I don't) you would probably still enjoy it (like I did).

Also, it has Asian representation (more nationalities), but as I live in European all-white country, I can't tell you how accurate they are.

As I really, really loved A Taste for Love, I would like to see more people read it and talk about it.
It did cover some important topics too, it wasn't all cakes and hearts, trust me.

So if you can, please give this book a try, and thank me later (or don't).

Really cute, sweet, and fun modern YA retelling of Pride & Prejudice set in a family baking competition. My only real critique of the book is it felt more like a new adult or adult romance novel than YA, but still such a fun read.