Friday YA: The Art of French Kissing by Brianna R. Shrum

Carter’s whole future rely’s on her getting into and winning a cooking competition, a la Top Chef for high schoolers, and getting a full scholarship into cooking school. Carter grew up poor. She learned to cook out of desperation because her parents were just awful at it. Something that was kind of a burden became her joy and she wants to follow her dream to someday open her own restaurant. When she wins entrance into the competition she’s overjoyed and is determined to do anything to win. She meets cute fellow chef Reid Yamada on day one where he chooses to play unfairly in their first competition. They are immediate adversaries, but are they really?

The Art of French Kissing was a really fun, lighthearted novel. The author painted the landscape with diverse characters with varying personalities. I wasn’t sure how Carter and Reid were going to go from enemies to friends, but it seemed to take a natural course and through the pairing in the competitions they soon had to rely on each other to win instead of looking over their shoulder for sabotage. If I had one tiny bit of criticism, I’d say that I wish Carter had been a little more confident and less hateful? I felt like she was the reason they weren’t friends sooner and it irritated me a bit. That was a pretty minor point though and I did move past it.

I really need to mention that even though these are teenagers there are VERY adult topics and the two main characters do have sex. It is not graphic or anything but I was surprised because I didn’t think this story needed to go down that road. If they were in college I don’t think I would have thought twice. I am not the targeted age for YA and am not sure if this is ok or if my feelings are the norm…

I do love a good novel with food and this one definitely had me taking a trip to the kitchen for some snacks. The Art of French Kissing hit all my YA Contemporary buttons, food, fun and friendships so with the exception of that moment of “wha?” I liked this book. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

The Art

Click this link to purchase*! The Art of French Kissing

Copyright 2018 Deborah Kehoe The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate

2 thoughts on “Friday YA: The Art of French Kissing by Brianna R. Shrum”

  1. Sounds like a really cute story! 🙂
    Yep… it’s fairly common for YA novels with romance to include sex. I also agree that most of the time, it really isn’t necessary to the story. Thanks for the content note and the review.

    Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.