Will be published on Forever Young Adult on 1/18/22:

Cover Story: Dig On In

The little corner embellishments featuring the cutlery and the whisks around the edging? I MEAN. Brava, this is fun! Bonus: it’s not a cartoony cover and correctly gives off the “historical but make it fun” vibes, so I’ll take it and will not complain.

The Deal:

Helena and Penelope are in their final term at the Royal Academy for Culinarians, where they plan on graduating with top honors—if they can get through their senior projects. After meeting Elijah, a street hawker selling amazing empanadas, Helena agrees to train Elijah in the art of cooking and gentlemanly comportment in exchange for using their lessons as her senior thesis. Elijah grins and bears Helena’s boorish and brisque methods, but Penelope’s non-judgmental sweetness is a soothing balm for Helena’s stings.

Is it possible to pass a street urchin off as a gentleman cook in a cooking competition for the princess herself? (If you thought this sounded like a gender-bent My Fair Lady, you’d be correct!)

BFF Charm: Mixed Bag

Brown paper bag filled with various BFF charms
Elijah seems like he could have a good time, and I’d love a rich friend like Helena who could bankroll all of our activities, but I would’ve shut her shit down way sooner than Penelope, who was sweet but such a doormat for so long. Do I want to join them at the end of the book? Yes, but more so just because what they’re doing sounds fantastic than because I couldn’t live without their company.

Swoonworthy Scale: 4

LORDY. Penelope and Elijah are big fat dunces when it comes to love. So much eye-rolling to be had. The author employs a trope I greatly dislike: the “I love you but won’t tell you so because I think being with me isn’t in your best interest, and I don’t respect your decision-making skills enough to let you make your own choices and know what you need to be happy.”

Talky Talk: Muddled

I loved My Fair Lady the movie when I was little. Some of the songs are still fantastic. But when I put it on recently after years between rewatches—wowee. I retained the major plot points, but perhaps I just have way less tolerance for Henry Higgins’ bullshit now. And why did Eliza’s drunken asshole of a father get so many “isn’t he so fun and loveable” songs and screen time?! He thought he SOLD her, for Christ’s sake. (It felt very leftover from stage play’s of the time when some venerable, loveable older actor made this side role “a big deal” by simply being there.) Luckily there was no such character in this book.

ANYWAY, all that to say, I still enjoy the general themes of the story (and “Without You” still slaps) but I was eager to see a gender-bent take where the author wasn’t going to make apologies for Higgins’ behavior. And as far as that part went, I think Cohen succeeded. But, ultimately, aside from a cooking competition where the stakes never felt that dire, not much actually happened. I recognized pivotal plot beats because it was a retelling, but it never felt like they were completely executed in a way that made me utterly delighted to be reading.

I could’ve used more personality depth to the characters themselves alongside the surface-level additions like making Elijah Jewish and Penelope half-Filipino. Yes, it gave them more external factors to react to as they dealt with some prejudiced restrictions of the time, but they were both…sorta boring. It may work for a 2.5 hour play, but I wanted more.

Bonus Factor: Tasty Business

Multiple plates of food on a nice table in a fancy dining room
This is, like, seriously FANCY tasty business, y’all. Penelope and Helena are in training to be the most elite chefs in the country, and Elijah is getting ready to compete in a cook-off for the royal family—so you can imagine that me, with a laymen’s palate, could juuuust about follow along in picturing these meals thanks only to heavy doses of Top Chef as a teen.

Allow your taste buds to picture:

Next he’d created a Lapsang souchong tea–smoked pigeon breast with a tamarind sauce in a flaky, herbed pastry cup (a refined version of one of his pasties), and for dessert, a chili and cinnamon–infused chocolate bon bon filled with a horchata liquid caramel.

Bonus Factor: Retellings

Cher in Clueless, sitting at her desk and holding a pen while she stares dreamily into the distance
It’s obvious (plus she said so in her author’s note) that Cohen is a major musical fan and clearly adores the source material, so I was enjoying the big and subtle nods to the movie (I would’ve loved to have been able to compare to the play as I was supposed to see it last year, but—COVID).

Bonus Factor: Alternate Histories

President Truman holding a newspaper incorrectly declaring Dewey as the winner of the 1948 election
I thought it was very cool to see how Cohen mixed in real world British history—I’d never heard of Princess Charlotte, the British heir apparent who died during childbirth and is literally the reason Queen Victoria was born (so they could keep the crown within the family)—with some AU elements of her own to make this 1800s setting a little more feminist and whimsical, but also didn’t shy away from pretending racial and religious prejudices would’ve magically disappeared.

Relationship Status: Polite Dinner Companion

You kept me entertained with your anecdotes, Book, so thanks for being a good dinner partner at our fancy English shin-dig. I would’ve totally picked up the wrong fork if you hadn’t corrected me. Enjoy your cigars in the parlor while I toddle off to have a food coma.

FTC Full Disclosure: I received my free review copy from HarperTeen. I received neither money nor peanut butter cups in exchange for this review. My Fine Fellow is available now.

loved this take on My Fair Lady! This story gave me so much more than the original! I loved the exploration of other cutters in the time period. The “what ifs” in the British monarchy and the development of the characters, especially our core trio. I cannot wait to recommend this book!

In this retelling of My Fair Lady, soon-to-be Culinarians Helena and Penelope set out to transform street vendor Elijah into a gentleman chef. Full of in-depth food descriptions (and a fabulous sounding recipe in the back of the book far too complicated for me to make), this book will have your mouth watering. The food descriptions are the best part of this book. Indeed, it starts out rather slow and the quarter to half drag to such a degree it makes it difficult to get into. It feels like there's very little purpose to anything. But in the second half, a challenge is revealed and romantic intentions come to light, making things far more interesting. I wish the first half of the book had been condensed, then I would have enjoyed it more.

Thanks to HarperTeen, NetGalley, and Berit Talks Books for my eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4 stars - 7/10

I received a complimentary copy of MY FINE FELLOW by Jennieke Cohen as part of a scheduled Let’s Talk Books tour. Thank you to Harper Teen and the author for the opportunity to read and review!

MY FINE FELLOW is a YA, gender swapped retelling of My Fair Lady. In the 1830s, Helena Higgins and Penelope Pickering are young Culinarian students working on their final projects to graduate as the best of the best when it comes to preparing fantastic food for the elite of society. Helena has been raised for greatness with every expectation of being top of her class. Penelope has long been looked down on for her Filipina heritage, but she’s determined to bring fantastic food from different influences to the forefront.

The young women meet Elijah, a young man with a definite talent for making tasty and unique food, but he’s without the means to move up from selling pasties on the street. Helena determines that he will be the perfect senior project. If she can turn him from a street hustler to a gentleman worthy of selling to high society in a store of his own, she will nail down the top spot in her graduating class.

I have always enjoyed My Fair Lady as a musical, but can definitely see why the author felt the story could do with a re-do to give it a more modern and diverse take, even as it stays set in the past. I really enjoyed seeing where changes were made and how the story was adapted! I found that the characters were really well done and there were definitely moments where I could see where the author pulled from the original material.

I always enjoy a good food related book as well, so really liked that change! It was interesting (and sometimes hunger inspiring) to hear about their forrays into food. The book tackles a lot of issues of feminism, racism, and antisemitism as well.

This was a really fun read and definitely one worth picking up! MY FINE FELLOW is available now!

This tale starts with a boy, Elijah, selling his best recipes on the street for pennies. Once picked up by two young ladies, Penelope and Helena, all bets are off. Helena is a headstrong woman set on making Elijah her senior project cooking master. Penelope is just there to watch and lend a helping hand... when things get messy. My Fine Fellow by Jennieke Cohen takes a classic musical for a spin. Lovers of "My Fair Lady" will enjoy this gender flipped tale about a young lad taken off the streets to help a cook in her senior project.

This tale is full of English society, brave characters and cooking delights. Fans of historical settings, classic musicals and underdog characters will adore Cohen's new tale.

My Fair Lady is one of my favorite classic musicals, so when I heard about I was extremely excited! I was a bit worried that the story wouldn't be able to hold a candle to its predecessor, but Cohen managed to keep just with the tone of the original story!

I think for fans of the original play (or the later musical and movie), the best part of this will be the characterization and the little references sprinkled in throughout the novel. The characters were extremely true to the originals, as well, which I found to be very satisfying. Pickering and Freddy, in particular, were two characters that I really enjoyed seeing.

But if you're going into this thinking you know how it ends, don't! While the premise and the characters remained the same, the direction Cohen chooses to take the plot in does not, and the ending is nowhere near the same as Pygmalion/My Fair Lady. There's also some amazing descriptions of food that made me hungry just reading them!

I think I only really have two complaints (if you can really call them that). The first is that the passage of time feels odd in some places, and some of the time skips just didn't feel right. The second con is more minor and more of a matter of personal taste, but I personally think it would have been cool to have Freddy genderswapped as well, since he is a fairly important side character. Of course, I loved all of his appearances in the story for the most part, so that's not really too big a gripe.

Overall, this was such a fun retelling, and I can see new and old fans alike enjoying this!

My Fair Lady meets The Great British Baking Show in an alternate 1830's London - this delightful YA novel is such a fun twist on a classic. I absolutely adored Penelope and Elijah, their friendship makes this book while Helena's growth is super satisfying. With themes of friendship, standing up for what's right, equality, diversity, and kindness, I feel like this novel was very well-written and addressed current social topics well.

Thank you to NetGalley for my e-arc of this book. Opinions in this review are my own.

*Mild language, racism and antisemitism directed toward a main character

I quite enjoyed Jennieke Cohen's Dangerous Alliance so I was thrilled when given the chance to read her upcoming My Fine Fellow thanks to HarperTeen and NetGalley. I actually started this last week after finishing the gothic and sometimes quite brutal Dunmoor as I needed something a lot more lighthearted to cleanse the brain palate.... and then decided to go festive for the Christmas Eve post and then got distracted and ... I'm finally finishing My Fine Fellow.  

It's a fun twist on Pygmalion/My Fair Lady. Higgins is Helena rather than Henry. Pickering is Penelope rather than Hugh. Instead of being experts in linguistics, the two girls are finishing up their training to be experts in culinary arts. Instead of turning a cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle into a lady, they set out to turn a Jewish street vendor named Elijah into a top chef.

I adore Penelope and Elijah and seeing what prejudices they battled with her being biracial and him being Jewish. I didn't adore the prejudices, of course ... but I quite admired how they were written. Helena, of course, is just as annoying and arrogant as Henry. In fact, she may even be moreso and drove me more than a bit crazy. I'm guessing that was quite purposeful and, therefore, masterfully done.

For the most part it is a fun read, but I made the dreadful mistake of starting it while on an empty stomach. The food descriptions just about killed me by the end of the first chapter. 

Be forewarned -- read this with something nearby to nibble on at the very least. 

Now I'm going to go grab a snack, pull up My Fair Lady on Netflix, and debate the next read.

I read DANGEROUS ALLIANCE: AN AUSTENTACIOUS ROMANCE early last year and fell head over heels in love with it. Jennieke Cohen's writing is delightful so I was over the moon when NetGalley allowed me to read a digital ARC of MY FINE FELLOW: A DELICIOUS ENTANGELEMENT.

I am happy to report that MY FINE FELLOW: A DELICIOUS ENTANGLEMENT did not disappoint. The story is such a creative and modern take on My Fair Lady/Pygmalion. Helena Higgins is such an interesting update to Henry Higgins--just as unlikeable and endearing all at once; Elijah Little as a gender-bent update to Eliza Doolittle is beyond brilliant--especially with his Jewish heritage (so wonderful and refreshing to read a story about a Jewish character that is not about the Holocaust); and Penelope Pickering as an update to Colonel Pickering might be the true star of the story. I love that she is biracial and that her parents have a loving, happy relationship. This representation is so important. It is wonderful to see how her background impacts her interactions with others--and that she acknowledges how passing as white gives her certain advantages.

Cohen's writing has such a powerful, charming voice. Her story is also clearly well-researched. I feel like I get bonus history lessons while reading her work. Cohen clearly has a gift for making the past come alive. And those food descriptions! This piece of historical fiction is a gift to literary foodies. While the story did not sweep me away as much as DANGEROUS ALLIANCE: AN AUSTENTACIOUS ROMANCE did, I will still be recommending MY FINE FELLOW: A DECLICIOUS ENTANGELEMENT just as enthusiastically.

“You have been the sunshine of my days. Could it be that I am yours?”
— 𝙈𝙮 𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙁𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬, Jennieke Cohen

Rating: 🎄🎄🎄/5

Man, I desperately wanted to love this one. I’m such a sucker for historical fiction, and after 𝘿𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝘼𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚, I had high hopes for this one.

Unfortunately, Cohen fell into a sophomore slump. I enjoyed the story. A wealthy girl of good standing takes a poor boy off the street, teaches him proper manners and speech and hones his culinary abilities to present him before society as a gentleman chef? It should have been amazing.

But, I absolutely HATED one of the main characters (there are three). She completely took away from the story and made me dread what the next page would bring. I adored the other two characters, but they were greatly overshadowed by the antics and personality of the third.

In addition, the book really started to drag around the halfway mark. Every time I picked it up, I expected to find that I was much closer to the end than I actually was. It was too slow for my liking.

I recommend giving it a chance if you’re interested, but it just was not for me.

𝕋𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕜 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕡𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕣, 𝕒𝕦𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕣, 𝕒𝕟𝕕 ℕ𝕖𝕥𝕘𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕪 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔸ℝℂ 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕡𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕦𝕟𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕥𝕠 𝕣𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕓𝕠𝕠𝕜 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕡𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟!

Thanks to #NetGalley and HarperTeen for allowing me to read an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Jennieke Cohen's reimagining of My Fair Lady is set in an alternate England, where Princess Charlotte lived to become Queen, women have rights, and Culinarians "are the crème de la crème of high society."
Lady Helena Higgins and Penelope Pickering (both 17) are the top students at the Royal Academy of Culinaria Artisticus. For their final semester they must complete a project highlighting their abilities. Penelope will showcase recipes from the Americas, especially those from her Filipino heritage. After a chance meeting, Lady Helena has decided to turn Elijah Little, a poor street vendor, into a gentleman chef, thereby proving that anyone can rise in society with the proper education. Elijah just wants to learn enough to be able to have a little shop with a kitchen of his own in which to sell his pastries.
What follows is a clean Rom-Com that is a combination of Food Wars and Pygmalion that will have you laughing out loud and wishing you could taste the dishes they create. The author includes historical notes and a recipe for Chocolate Coconut Empanadas.

Elijah hawks wonderfully delicious pasties at the night market. Helena and Penelope, aspiring Culinarians in their final year of study, run into him there. And Helena decides to make educating Elijah her project. This book is a YA, gender-swapped My Fair Lady retelling.

I really enjoyed the chapter titles, and I found myself singing songs from the musical as I read. There's such wonderful food in this book, and food is seen as a means to learn about other cultures. The middle of the book was a bit slow, but I especially enjoyed the beginning and end.

There's a deep discussion of racism and anti-Semitism. I found it well done, especially for a YA novel. However, it was set in an alternative history of England (with Queen Charlotte, rather than Queen Victoria), and I wonder if that makes the bigotry easier to dismiss than greater historical accuracy across the board might have.

I found this a fascinating update to My Fair Lady (and the original Pygmalion), and I am glad to have read it.

Thank you to HarperTeen and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. These opinions are my own.

TW: anti-Semitism, racism

3.5 stars rounded up

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I found the premise of a gender-swapped My Fair Lady (with cooking involved!) absolutely impossible to resist, and I’m glad I didn’t. This book was quite a fun little ride. While at times, I wanted to smack some characters’ heads for being so thick, it didn’t detract too much from
my enjoyment of the story. The romance was cute and fluffy, just like I like them.

Be warned, though! Do not read this one an empty stomach, the food descriptions are just too tempting! (And yes, there is a recipe included in the back that I dearly want to test out myself).

What a fun take on Pygmalion! I loved this fun story and how it all came together. The characters were fun and called to mind the originals. The food sounded amazing, and I need to try things now!

My Fine Fellow is a gender-swap of retelling of My Fair Lady. I have always had a love of old movies and My Fair Lady is one that I loved! So, when I read the description of this book, I knew that I had to read it.

I feel like there was so much potential for this to be a five-star, but some things just fell flat.

1st) The "food" talk drug on and on. I understand making the book feel authentic, but I think even a tad less detail would have made it less cumbersome to read (not to mention less boring). I would have never read this book in MS or HS because it took almost half of the book to really get into it.

2nd) There was so much focus on the food, that I felt the characters lacked real depth and development. I would have loved to see more banter and conversation between Penelope and Elijah. And even Elijah and Helena didn't have very much dialogue back and forth.

3rd) The POV kept changing. One sentence would be Helena's POV and then the next sentence would be Penelope's. Now, I love getting into other characters' heads, but I wish the author would have stuck with one POV for each section.

Overall, it was an okay book, but not one that I would re-read.

<p>With some delightful twists on history and pages of delectable food descriptions, <em>My Fine Fellow</em> is an entertaining take on my <em>My Fair Lady</em> that will have readers' stomachs grumbling and their hearts hoping for a happy ending for Elijah.</p>

<p>While the book does feel long at times with its extensive descriptions of food, cooking technique, history, and the characters' pasts interrupting the action, many readers may enjoy these interludes as they can get some real tips for making delicious meals and pastries and learn more about how Jews were treated in England during the early 1800s. Even the main characters are not always free from prejudice on certain topics, adding realism to the book even as it provides those characters an opportunity to grow.</p>

<p>The best part, I believe, is the focus on cooking competitions. I love a good book about the culinary arts, and <em>My Fine Fellow</em> has enough to keep any reader satisfied on this point, with its featuring of a wide variety of foods and techniques and inspiration from various cultures. It will be hard to read this without getting hungry.</p>

<p>The characters are bit hit-or-miss for me. Helena is absolutely insufferable, and while I understand that's the entire point of her characterization, it at times made reading this book an irritating experience rather than an entertaining one. She's also snotty and stuffy, and I often wanted to laugh at her way of speaking, which is ironic considering her goal is to teach Elijah how to speak like her. Penelope and Elijah are a bit more well-rounded, and they also have bigger struggles to deal with than Helena does, which grounds them a bit.</p>

<p><em>My Fine Fellow</em> stands out for its focus on food, and I think readers who enjoy YA historical fiction that provides real insight into history while also making creative alterations and not always taking itself series will like this one.</p>

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperTeen for an advanced copy to review! A romcom esc retelling of My Fair Lady/Pygmalion but with a twist; two young women from a prestigious cooking school take in a male Jewish culinary artist from the streets to turn him into a world renowned chef. The characters are not perfect however and there is some heavy anti-Semitism and racism throughout the book. I will say it was a quick enjoyable read for the most part but a little long in spots and could have been a bit shorter. Good for readers who are looking for romance, love cooking, and the Victorian period.

This book was one I was looking forward to because of the draw of My Fair Lady retelling. I thoroughly enjoyed this book thanks to the many nods to the original. It was well done with good writing. The world building was also intriguing with a few changes to things (I'll let the reader find that out on their own, but enjoyed it). The descriptions of the different foods and all the different ways they were described were beautiful and mouth-watering. The book was a lot of fun, and would definitely recommend. I'm sure my view could be a little tainted due to loving and growing up with My Fair Lady, however, I commend the author on the retelling by keeping it fresh and yet well done. Would recommend!

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley, HarperCollins Children's Books, and HarperTeen in exchange for an honest review.

MY FINE FELLOW is a gender-flipped retelling of My Fair Lady (which of course is a retelling of George Bernard Shaw's play, Pygmalion). In Cohen's version, readers have Helena Higgins and her friend Penelope Pickering, who are in their final year at the Royal Academy and top of their class. As they ready to take the world by storm as new Culinarians, Pickering's chance encounter with a local London street merchant hawking his pasties gives Higgins the perfect idea for her final project.... can Higgins turn a lowly, poor, street merchant into a proper chef? Instead of Eliza Doolittle, Cohen gives us Elijah Little, who on top of being poor, is Jewish. In this version of mid-19th century London, both will cause a person to have few options in life (and Little's religious beliefs play a pretty prominent role throughout the entire story).

As Elijah begins to learn the art of Culinaria from Higgins (and Pickering), MY FINE FELLOW plays out similarly to My Fair Lady. Higgins takes Little out into polite society for test runs, there are missteps and misunderstandings. We even still get Freddy Eynsford-Hill as a distraction (just between Pickering and Little instead of Doolittle and Higgins). I was intrigued by the cooking aspect and the reality cooking competition feel of those bits of the novel. Though they did make me hungry.

I won't lie, the miscommunications trope in novels of two characters that CLEARLY like each other but for whatever reason won't verbalize it to the other causing lots of misunderstandings and situations that didn't need to happen if they just admitted their feelings to each other is a trope that I feel is overplayed. HOWEVER it still hooks me and I stayed up way past my bedtime at one part in this novel when I thought Little and Pickering were FINALLY going to tell the other they liked them waiting for it to happen.

Overall this was a fun read, especially for someone who grew up on the Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn film. I loved the nods to it as well - there is even a moment where one character says they could have danced all night. I liked how the gender roles were flipped and the author's note was really interesting on thinking about what could have happened if Princess Charlotte hadn't died so young.

A gender-flipped retelling of My Fair Lady with a Jewish male Eliza Doolittle? Sign me up!! Make it all about a chef competition and I am there! This book was delightful with everything that made My Fair Lady an intriguing tale: a "gentleman's*" wager, unintentional social climbing, bigotry, and the protagonist who comes into their own and makes their own way in the end.

I loved this book and can't wait for the author's next project!


*I say gentleman's here but what I mean is an arrogant aristocratic lady culinary student hell bent on proving her superiority over, well, everyone. Just like Henry Higgins, one could argue.