Salty, Bitter, Sweet

Cuevas, Mayra. Salty, Bitter, Sweet. 2020. 320p. ISBN 9780310769774.

Born of a Cuban-American father and a French mother, Isabella Fields has focused her entire life on cooking. An amazing cook and baker in her own right, Isabelle has won the right to participate in a summer competition designed to select next year's apprentice to world-renowned Chef Pascal Grattard. At seventeen, Isabella is traveling to France to spend the summer with her father, who divorced her mother last year following a torrid love affair with another French woman, and who is now expecting a baby. On top of grieving for the loss of her family, she's also mourning the death of her beloved grandmother, her father's mother. An exile from Cuba, her abuela taught her everything she knows about cooking and instilled in her a passion for the delicious.

In France, she's one of 13 competitors. She makes fast friend with the two other girls, but the guys studiously avoid all three of them. Chef Croissant supervises the competition, and Isabella is quick to run afoul of the myriad rules that govern the kitchen's operations. At her dad, she meets her pregnant stepmother's former stepchild, a hot Spaniard with a lovable albino bulldog. She finds him annoying and full of himself, but that doesn't seem to prevent her from falling for him. 

With eveyrthing that happening with her and around her, can Isabella focus long enough to earn the prestigious internship she has always wanted? Filled with memorable characters and a well-developed stories, readers who enjoy romance and cooking are about to be served a wonderful story about being true to oneself and question one's own desires and motives. Fans of books like Once and For All and P.S. I Love You will love Isabella and her trials and tribulations