Review: Home Skillet (Culinary Kings #1) by Cate Ashwood & Sandra Damien

Sometimes the only way to move forward… is to go back.

JAMES

I don't know what's more shocking—the sudden end to my marriage, or the fact that I'd married a woman at all. But now I'm broke and homeless, kicked out of my Upper West Side apartment while my ex-wife walks away with everything we've ever worked for. So what's an executive chef stripped of his dignity gonna do? Go back to Jersey with his tail between his legs, that's what.

BEN

I can’t say that spending a decade pining after my best friend was the best use of my time. While I'd pretty much become an expert at the whole unrequited love thing, I'd resigned myself to the fact that Jimmy and I were never gonna happen. But when Jimmy turned up on my doorstep in his hour of need, I jumped at the chance to offer him my bed—er, couch. I mean, what are friends for, right? Now that he's released from the shackles of matrimony, I can't wait to show him exactly what he's been missing out on all these years. What I didn't anticipate was him showing me that maybe I'd been missing out too.

I love second chance romances and Home Skillet ticked all the boxes there. James and Ben have been best friends for, well, pretty much ever and I could easily feel their connection in the writing. The story is told in alternating POV’s, which is good because the two of them have very different styles of communication and I don’t think they would have been as well fleshed out as they were with just one side of the story. Especially with James. If I hadn’t had his perspective I would have been way fussier with him than I kind of already was.

Both Ben and James work in the culinary world and while it could be said that James works in the culinary arts it could also be said that Ben has a job in a kitchen. James is passionate about his career and sacrificed Ben for that passion. I didn’t like that. I understood it, but that didn’t mean I had to be on board with it. James and Ben were bone buddies from way back and James ended that so he could marry a woman and further his career. He and his wife had a business transaction, nothing more and frankly, I just can’t wrap my romance-loving-brain around it.

Ben was in love with James since forever and it was just plain sad to read his perspective a lot of the times. Dude had it bad and James was all about James. Right up until he lost it all and had to get his proverbial house in order. I think that’s where my issue was. James changed because he had to, not because of some innate desire to connect with another human outside of a kitchen, and that too made me sad.

Ben was snarky, funny and charming. I liked him even if his self deprecation was a little much at times. When James (Jimmy, to Ben) left, Ben put his life on hiatus and lived from paycheck to paycheck, hating his boss and one-night-standing his way through the gay clubs in town. So, on his side it made me wonder, what would have happened to him if Jimmy wouldn’t have come home to him because he needed a place to crash? Would he have still been a miserable job zombie or would he have finally grown up and become something better for himself?

I loved the premise for this story and the characters were flawed but had hope. Part of what I love about second chance stories is the inevitability of the relationship and that was the one thing that was missing in Home Skillet for me. Ben and Jimmy were back together because of the life path Jimmy’s wife chose, not because the two of them finally got their shit together. Good on her, but shame and damn on the two of them (mostly Jimmy TBH).

I wanted to tell Ben to get off his ass and get himself some happy for his own well being and to slap some sense into Jimmy for being a selfish prick for so many years. BUT, all that ranting being said, the two of them do belong together and while I may be bitter and bitchy about Jimmy’s early life choices, I was pretty happy that they ended up together with a solid HEA.

**a copy of this story was provided for an honest review**

Review: Buchanan House by Charley Descoteaux

Eric Allen, thirty-three-year-old line cook, moved in with his grandmother, Jewell, after a disastrous coming-out when he was in middle school. She raised him, and he cared for her when she fell ill. When Jewell died, she left everything to Eric—angering his parents and older brother. The inheritance isn’t much, but Eric and his bestie, Nathan, pool their money and buy an abandoned hotel on an isolated stretch of the Central Oregon Coast. The hotel isn't far from Lincoln City—a town with its own Pride Festival and named for a president—so they christen it Buchanan House after James Buchanan, the “confirmed bachelor” president with the close male friend.

Eric and Nathan need a handyman to help them turn Buchanan House into the gay resort of their dreams. Eric finds Tim Tate in the local listings, and over the months leading to opening weekend, Tim reveals himself as a skilled carpenter with many hidden talents. Eric falls hard for Tim, but before he can see a future with the gorgeous handyman, he has to get over twenty years of being bullied and shamed by his birth family. It would be much easier if Eric’s brother Zach wasn't trying to grab part of the inheritance or ruin opening weekend.

It started good and then...

It crashed.

Buchanan House starts with Eric grieving at his grandmother's funeral. His grandmother was the only positive family figure in his life. Eric's family is homophobic and his mother tries to make a scene at the funeral, they feel they deserve to get a share of Grandma Jewel's will. Eric, with the help of his best friend and his grandma's best friend, puts a stop to the money hungry family with a little clever trick. Eric, living a grueling job as a cook, pools his money with his best bud, Nathan, and opens a resort in Oregon named the Buchanan for the only bachelor American president.

The story was solid up to that point. It kind of jumped around with Eric and Nathan not discussing actually purchasing the resort or Eric's drinking problem that disappears in the rest of the book. this became an issue for me. I would just start getting used to a new idea being introduced and then the story jumped to a different plot point or twist and I'm left wonder and rereading what I missed. Because I must have missed it. I'm wondering who's on first, who's on second while the story is already on fourth base and it skipped third.

The romance started late in the story and then went from level 1 to 10 super fast. Eric has issues: self-esteem, bad break up (he's only been in one relationship and the ex boyfriend was a douche-knuckle with the same name as the current love interest), grief, psychosexual anal issues which relate to his family's homophobia and his struggle with his self acceptance/hatred of his bisexuality (Freud would have a field day with him) So you add all of that and his love of cooking and then the cast of characters and friends into only a novella...the romance will get shortchanged unless the author kept an eye on it.

What the story gave was rushed romance, decent-ish gay fiction, but both suffered because the other half wasn't strong enough to help carry the story.

What I liked:

- The QUILTBAG cast of characters. - The author tried to include as much of those letters in that acronym as possible. Ambitious but it was cool.

- Eric wasn't the typical hot, anal-ready, tall, good looking, sexually aware main character. He was 33 and still questioning his sexual identity as a bisexual man. He still had hang ups (don't we all) and yes his family and their homophobia added to his mental issues with his anus (Freud would have a field day with this guy)

- Eric cried a lot. He was emotional, short and bitchy but still a good person. I liked him. The story not as much as him. Because he became real to me, the way he was written. Eric getting his happy ending. His friendship with Nathan. Though I question the speed of their relationship, the way Tim and Eric acted toward one another was great.

The Problems:

- Storytelling/style - I might be not too clever enough to get all the points of this story. It was too jarring, the pacing was weird instead of quirky.  When it finally hit its stride (last fourth - was far too late to make much of an impact)

- While trying to include the entire QUILTBAG, the romance was swept under the rug -  Eric and Tim barely speak more than a handful of sentences, Eric goes from pining for Tim assuming Tim falls for him more glamorous BFF within two weeks of working on the job. Tim reads standoffish, then enter a big life or death crisis and suddenly Tim is all about Eric. Um...when? (this is an issue I'll discuss later) Then the two are zipping through a relationship into a white wedding in a matter of months when I'm still stuck on the fact they didn't have a solid starting point. The author does a great job of trying to stick every letter from LGBTQIA and having a character represent each faction. And that is great. Thank you. Also the disabled characters also get some shine. Love it but while all those characters are getting included...the romance, or lack thereof is the one that suffers.

- Rushed ending - So not only was I playing who's on first, who's on second and what the hell did I leave on third base, the romance continues to speed train into a HEA whether the characters were ready in my opinion or not (they weren't).

- And the story's 'villain', Eric's brother Zach, who I thought the author did a decent job of portraying as a homophobic bully, just does a 180 without any retaliation or revenge in a phone call? Not buying it. Greedy people don't just stop being greedy because you will it to be or have friends of friends in high places. If the brother was just going to be forgotten like that toward the end, why include him in the first place? The evil mother in the beginning did a fine job of being the bad guy without having to write an evil brother. Yes, he does help add dimension to Eric. But overall, if he starts with a bang and ends with a minor peep, to me, Zach wasn't needed.

I've read this author in the past and enjoyed her work, so I'll just take this as an off day and look out for something else from her in the future. I did enjoy the ideas in this one, wanted to love this so bad but the execution was off. 

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