Genre: Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Gordon, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
Trevor Hill has a secret.
By day he’s a mild-mannered journalist, but by night he’s the hottest—and most hated—food critic in town. When he walks into Nana O’Neill’s Bakery looking for his next scathing review, the last thing he expects is someone like Owen behind the counter. The scowling man looks more like a bouncer than a baker, but after one bite, Trevor is in love—with Owen’s baking at least.
Owen O’Neill has secrets of his own.
Scarred, tattooed Owen would rather be in the kitchen whipping up pastries than dealing with actual people. But with the business failing, he can’t bring himself to kick out any repeat customers, even ones as annoying, dismissive, sarcastic, funny, and gorgeous as Trevor.
All Owen wants is to be left to run his little bakery in peace—a task made more difficult not only by Trevor’s distracting presence, but also by the legions of fans that show up following a review by a famous yet secretive critic…
A 35,000 word novella, Suspiciously Sweet is as light and fluffy as a genoise sponge, but served hot and filled with plenty of spice!
The Review
This novella is pretty good, an evaluation that combines elements of highly disparate quality: some very good indeed, others rather unfortunate. Which is to say that there is some talented writing here, but also many bits that just go clunk.
The romance itself is well-told. It has sufficient impediments to the burgeoning interest between the two main characters, most stemming from misunderstandings and false assumptions. The set-up is designed for this: Trevor is a food reviewer (writing under the pseudonym, Mr. Tasty), Owen is a baker and owner of Nana O’Neill’s bakery. Natural combatants, surely!
The interactions between these two men are at times well-conceived and implemented. The elements of physical heat are represented particularly effectively. For example, Trevor seeing Owen, at one point reacts:
He was in a long-sleeved shirt today, but it was threadbare and he had the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hiding none of the flex of his powerful muscles as he worked. There was a smear of flour just above his jaw. A wave of emotion stronger than lust crashed over Trevor as he realized dizzily that he wanted nothing more in this world than to go over and gently brush the flour off.
And Owen is not immune to the charms of Trevor, either:
Elegant as ever, Trevor picked the cup up and took a bite. Like always, he closed his eyes as he chewed. The sweep of those dark lashes against his cheeks made Owen’s heart beat even faster. Trevor was just so damn beautiful it hurt.
The effectiveness of this sort of similar-but-different mutual appreciation between two characters works well and demonstrates the utility of using alternating point-of-views in a romance story.
But then there are the bits that go clunk. For example, Trevor thinks to himself upon first seeing Owen’s tattoos and magnificent physique: Dangerous guys are hot. But then, a little later, encountering Owen’s gruff manner, Trevor surprisingly comments bitterly to himself:
But then he’d had to open his damn mouth and be an obnoxious asshole like every other head chef—pastry or otherwise—that Trevor had ever met.
My reaction to this was: Wait! What? For Trevor seems to believe that the qualities associated with “dangerous guys” do not include being obnoxious. Does that make sense?
The effect of this sort of thing, where the reader is forced to try to make sense of details that don’t seem to fit, is both confusing and distracting. The reader is pulled out of the story so that, instead of being immersed in the story, the reader is outside, thinking about the story. And this results in the magic of the created world collapsing.
And, unfortunately, this happens again and again in “Suspiciously Sweet,” diminishing the pleasure and appreciation of the story.
This is a shame, because on the plus side there are truly good, creative elements here and there—even a Freudian slip (always fun) when Trevor thinks to himself:
If only he was a little more selfish, he could have kept Owe—Nana O’Neill’s all to himself.
Aside from inconsistencies or odd conceptions, there is another challenge to believability: the depiction of Owen’s abilities and work ethic in a rather over-the-top series of excellences. This affects as well our sympathy and interest in this character, for it is a part of human nature to root for the underdog. Someone who is good at almost everything, well, they don’t get our sympathy much. It is the struggle to succeed, characteristic of someone with a preponderance of challenges rather than excellences, that gets our interest.
I am not speaking of a character’s physical attractions, of course; in MM romances one can almost never go too far in ascribing the qualities of being hot, built, or simply gorgeous, to a character. And Owen certainly is built and gorgeous—magnificently so—but it is his almost superhuman ability to run his bakery single-handed (with only one employee at the front counter), that grates and challenges credulity. Not only does he do all the shopping for supplies, baking and cleaning everything, but later on in the story, when a good review increases the popularity of Nana O’Neill’s bakery to where customers line up outside each morning before it opens, Owen even takes coffee out to them (it’s winter) before beginning to bake. Really?
The story arc is basic enough, but though as mentioned there are challenges, the plethora of super-positive elements makes the problems faced by the characters seem by comparison unimpressive, made of tissue. And this, when combined with the frequent minor inconsistencies, leaves the reader less than fully emotionally invested in the story.
Furthermore, while the unspoken attractions and Trevor’s secret provide good fodder for the misunderstandings and tension, they also give rise to a lot of rumination. And, since we get both points-of-view, the amount of rumination is doubled, a cautionary example of how too much rumination can dull a reader’s interest.
This is especially notable when the two men actually begin to really talk, when there is interaction and, more importantly, interplay. At that point the reader’s full interest returns with the thought: Oh, at last! Something is happening! But then, a little later, the rumination returns.
A good example of both the good and bad attributes in the writing takes place when Owen, stung by Trevor’s mixed praise of his baked goods, resolves to develop his own recipes. And, when he gives Trevor one of these to taste:
“What do you think? Tell me the truth.”
Trevor blinked his eyes open. The truth?
The truth was, this was the single greatest thing he’d ever eaten. Bar none.
The truth was, it made him feel warm to the very center of his core and melted away every fear or doubt that he’d ever had.
The truth was, he wanted to live with this feeling for the rest of his life.
The truth was, he would give it all up in a heartbeat in exchange for just one of the proud, shy smiles Owen was giving him now.
The truth was…
“I’m Mr. Tasty.”
Here again is the familiar, over-the-top, best-of-the-best theme (“greatest thing he’d ever eaten”), but as well there is delightful and heart-warming crisis, one with an unexpected twist: Trevor putting revealing his identity as Mr. Tasty, the reviled food reviewer, ahead of an honest appraisal of Owen’s pastry creation. Very human, and good story-telling!
In conclusion: The writer is clearly gifted, and writes well. But there are still all those failures to convince, details that run counter to the reader’s sense of rightness—meaning consistency and believability—that would otherwise immerse the reader in the story and make them really root for the characters. Hopefully this touch will develop in subsequent stories. But in “Suspiciously Sweet,” the lack of grip or verisimilitude, leaves a story that is only pretty good.
The Reviewer
About Gordon: Having received formal training in the world of science, Gordon has always found relief from the strictures of present-day reality in reading fiction, mostly fantasy, horror and sci-fi, fiction that explores regions of what is sometimes called the Kingdom of If. Here the rules can be virtually anything, allowing for greater possibilities of wonder and strange discovery. Gordon also writes, among other things, stories of M/M romance within these genres. This provides the opportunity for exploring how characters, some of them possibly not fully human, might act and react in truly strange circumstances. He writes romance because, of all the mind-blowingly possibilities inherent in the creation of imaginative worlds, the most mysterious and magical are the operations of the human heart itself, including its curious ability to grow when broken.
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