Author: Kristen Callihan
Kindle Edition, KU. Audiobook, Audible
Emma Maron is adored as Princess Anya in Dark Castle (a Game of Thrones kinda show). Well, she was Princess Anya, because she found out during the table reading for the season finale that Princess Anya literally gets axed. She goes home to find her football player boyfriend in bed with a young waitress at their home. Things just took a turn for the worse. Now, contractually obligated to keep mum about the character’s death and her subsequent unemployment, and now also homeless, she heads to Rosemont, the gorgeous home of one her grandmother’s dearest friends, Amalie, to lick her wounds.
Lucian (Luc) Osmond, Amalie’s grandson is also there with wounds of his own. He’s recently retired from hockey, the love of his life. His body is in its prime, but his head has taken a concussion too many and he can’t risk playing a high contact sport as hockey. So he is staying with the grandmother who raised him and at Rosemont he turning hobby, baking, into art. You see, he not only bakes, he creates scrumptious, edible forms of pure art.
Lucian is grumpy, Emma is guarded… but a moonlit skinny deeping episode and several trays of luscious pastries delivered to her door bring them together. Will they be able to heal and find their way to HEA?
I loved this book!!!! I had listened to the audiobook when it came out and I decided to re-read it for reasons I will explain below, and I fell in love with Luc and Emma all over again.
He BAKES!!!! That to me is swoon worthy in itself, but he a grump grainy of man who can make pastries worthy of the gods! How can you not fall for him?
Emma is also a very relatable character. She was humiliated in her job, learning that she lost in front of all her colleagues. A job that she loved.
I also think that they way Emma deals with Luc’s demons (his non-ability to play hockey anymore made him lose his sense of self and sense of worth) is so beautiful. She knows what he is going through, she respected it, but she won’t condone what he wants to do to gain his identity back.
Their way to each other is bumpy, but they do get there.
The book also has a wonderful set of secondary characters: Amalie, Sal, Brommie… <3
Narration: Well, it’s Jacob Morgan and Ava Erickson. So, there is no way this can’t be amazing, right? Jacob Morgan makes all voices perfectly and his French accent is adorable. Ava has a sweet voice and she does all characters well too.
NOTE ABOUT A CONTROVERSY: I mentioned above that I re-read this book. One of the main reasons I did is because I read Someone You Love and gushed about it. You see, when you read them with a time apart between the reading of each one, you may not realize immediately that SYL is (let me be sarcastic here) heavily inspired by Make It Sweet. The similarities are endless. The plot, the characters, even the skinny dipping in the moonlight scene makes and appearance in that book. It’s not a copy and paste thing, but you can’t deny that someone just stole from someone else’s work and I can’t condone that.
