What do you think?
Rate this book
Hot Chef!
ASIN B01ERWIDNM moved from here
and then to the more recent edition
Emily Gold, head chef for one of Chicago’s most acclaimed French restaurants, has just been picked to compete on the hit reality TV show Hot Chef! Everything has been falling into place for Emily with her cooking career. All that’s missing is her love life.
Raina, another contestant on the show, appears to be introverted and sweet on the outside. But inside of her burns a flame of culinary talent that instantly draws Emily in. The two become fast friends and as the heat in the kitchen grows, so does the heat in their relationship.
But reality TV is never drama free, as both Emily and Raina soon discover. Will the desire Emily feels for her beautiful competitor overcome her desire to win the title of Hot Chef?
and then to the more recent edition
Emily Gold, head chef for one of Chicago’s most acclaimed French restaurants, has just been picked to compete on the hit reality TV show Hot Chef! Everything has been falling into place for Emily with her cooking career. All that’s missing is her love life.
Raina, another contestant on the show, appears to be introverted and sweet on the outside. But inside of her burns a flame of culinary talent that instantly draws Emily in. The two become fast friends and as the heat in the kitchen grows, so does the heat in their relationship.
But reality TV is never drama free, as both Emily and Raina soon discover. Will the desire Emily feels for her beautiful competitor overcome her desire to win the title of Hot Chef?
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 24, 2016
44 people are currently reading
82 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 26, 2016
Cute story. Would have been much better without terms such as "moistened pleat."
Note with regards to the other review: it's not that there's a lot of mewling during sex, which is what I was expecting, but that Raina just mewls a lot. Like when getting meat from a butcher.
Note with regards to the other review: it's not that there's a lot of mewling during sex, which is what I was expecting, but that Raina just mewls a lot. Like when getting meat from a butcher.
September 5, 2016
Not bad -- really a fairytale but cute. And the top chef references were hilarious as I love cooking shows. The writing could have been a bit better. There was a lot of mewling going on in that book. But the characters were solid and interesting. I wish there had been a bit more resolution to the Dale storyline.
dnf
January 25, 2018I was so painfully excited for this and I couldn't make it more than a few pages. I knew it was Top Chef-inspired and I thought that was awesome but it's well beyond "inspired" and more like...Top Chef with the names slightly changed? Maybe I'll try something else of the author's at some point but it read to me like fanfic and that is very not my thing.
October 2, 2016
I had high hopes for this book. The subject matter, a chef on a cooking competition, was interesting, the characters were likeable. The first half of the book was pretty good, if somewhat predictable, with descriptions of the competition, the judges, etc.
But, it was almost like a different author wrote the last third of the book. It became 'inspirational', with lots of trite words about life, inserted in random places unrelated to the story.
The writing was also quite unpolished, lots of missing 'the' and 'a' where the needed to be, causing lots of distraction.
Lastly, Emily and Raina's relationship, although sweet, didn't seem real, so it wasn't believable for Emily to have fallen in love, and Raina actually never returns that sentiment. Sloppy writing in the most important part of the story.
So, it could have been good, but it was only OK.
But, it was almost like a different author wrote the last third of the book. It became 'inspirational', with lots of trite words about life, inserted in random places unrelated to the story.
The writing was also quite unpolished, lots of missing 'the' and 'a' where the needed to be, causing lots of distraction.
Lastly, Emily and Raina's relationship, although sweet, didn't seem real, so it wasn't believable for Emily to have fallen in love, and Raina actually never returns that sentiment. Sloppy writing in the most important part of the story.
So, it could have been good, but it was only OK.
October 18, 2016
There's nothing in this book that feels organic and reading one girl describe another as looking as a child and how much she wants to do her put me off completely. Too bad because I love Top Chef and really looked forward to a mix of food, competition and love.
January 12, 2018
I haven't read many books revolving around the food industry, especially not chefs competing on reality t.v. shows. I can't remember where I heard about this title, but I thought it looked interesting because I do like cooking competitions and thought it sounded like a fun read.
In the end, this book was very much on the "just okay" line for me. There were some good things, but the problems I had with the book far outweighed them and resulted in a 2 star rating.
The first problem that popped up was that Emily, the voice we were hearing the entire novel through, continued to infantilize/objectify Raina through her descriptions of her physical appearance. This tapered off after a bit, but its occurrence left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
A relationship does develop, as expected, but even after it starts to heat up Emily still makes remarks that irked me:
The way her attraction to Raina is spelled out made me feel weird. Saying you're attracted to childlike people, comparing them (again) later to a lost little orphan, kind of feels borderline inappropriate. She even makes an observation at bedtime one night and comments (internally) about how she's not a creep. If you have to make that statement, you probably are.
Shortly after their introduction on the set of Hot Chef, Emily also made some judgments about Raina, such as:
Such a short acquaintance of two hours max is not sufficient to make notes on someone's behavior, particularly since Emily has only seen Raina under one circumstance and has nothing else to go by in her above statement. She also makes some bizarre assumptions about Raina's personality and her hometown not reflecting in it. The following statement made no sense in context and irritated me a bit:
Raina herself was a bit flat. Her personality only seemed to come out when she was sabotaged about midway through the book, which felt unfair to her. The single most annoying thing, however, was how she kept "mewling" or "she mewed". That is not how people talk in general conversation and it sounded like the author was starting to infantilize her much like Emily was. Her actions and her words didn't hold up as cohesive, from the same person, and one particular moment is when she tells Emily about her famous chef father and how she didn't want to tell anyone, but then almost immediately she does on camera. I threw up my hands at this point.
As this is heavily based on the show Top Chef, with a possible theme or two thrown in from other popular cooking competitions, I had to wonder at some of the things that happened in the book, such as the huge freedom the contestants had in leaving the loft where they were staying. Emily even makes a comment about this:
I've never heard of a show like this allowing the people competing on it to wander around the host city during filming, much less with no cameras or chaperones. Putting aside the fact that they're technically employed by the network and not being supervised could get the network in trouble if there's an accident off set, Emily and Raina could easily have spilled secrets about the production before the show even began to air.
Timing was an issue too, not least in regards to the show. The whole book takes place over six weeks, but the show doesn't air live and yet, two episodes or so before the finale, there's a mention about the episodes starting to premiere. There's no way that a weekly show would've been able to squash itself into less than a month. It was a bit jarring, trying to figure that whole mess out.
Hot Chef itself started out alright, but quickly devolved into Top Chef fanfiction. Not only is the setup nearly identical, as far as I can tell, there are several characters that are clones of the real people and not disguised very well (their initials are literally the same as their fictional counterparts, in addition to physical descriptions that match). I think that the creativity of the book suffered because it relied to heavily on established persons and scenarios.
There was an unresolved story line regarding a predatory producer on the show that bugged me. Everything else, if not to my satisfaction, was at least ended. Happily ever after romance, someone wins, etc. Dale, however, was never censured for his behavior, nor was one of his minions that also participated in sabotaging the contest. It just kind of disappeared, though Raina makes a vague comment about it near the end. Other than that, nothing. The show taped everything else, but no one catches this slimy bastard or tapes it or sees it? Raina was hooked up to a mic the whole time and that's not nothing.
It feels like this book tried really hard to be an expose of reality cooking shows. While it might well have done that in some respects, that's not what this novel was billed as. For a book that takes place almost wholly within a cooking competition, there was a surprising lack of actual cooking scenes in the book.
Instead of slapping a flimsy mask over real personalities and real places and shows, I wish the author was being more creative, a better story teller overall. The sex scenes were a bit over the top sentimentality wise, but decently written. If the book as a whole were fleshed out more, some editorial mistakes corrected, and Emily's creepy remarks about Raina fixed, then I think this book could've been really good.
In the end, this book was very much on the "just okay" line for me. There were some good things, but the problems I had with the book far outweighed them and resulted in a 2 star rating.
The first problem that popped up was that Emily, the voice we were hearing the entire novel through, continued to infantilize/objectify Raina through her descriptions of her physical appearance. This tapered off after a bit, but its occurrence left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
She had the cutest little excited face, such clear and fair skin. She was a doll.
She was a short girl, small and diminutive, like a cute little speck.
A relationship does develop, as expected, but even after it starts to heat up Emily still makes remarks that irked me:
Talented and cute, childlike, Raina definitely checked a lot of the boxes of the girls I often found myself into.
Sitting perched up on the counter top, swinging her legs, she was so adorably cute. Like a lost little orphan who might blow away in the wind if you didn’t nail her feet down.
The way her attraction to Raina is spelled out made me feel weird. Saying you're attracted to childlike people, comparing them (again) later to a lost little orphan, kind of feels borderline inappropriate. She even makes an observation at bedtime one night and comments (internally) about how she's not a creep. If you have to make that statement, you probably are.
She had her hair done in two tight braids against her head, wearing just a t- shirt and her panties. I could feel that familiar, sensual arousal building up inside of me as I watched her slip her bare feet across the carpet and toward her bed. Her panties were lime green with dark grey trim. I committed them to memory. C’mon, I’m not a creep… I was just crushing.
Shortly after their introduction on the set of Hot Chef, Emily also made some judgments about Raina, such as:
It’s just how her words would come out sometimes when she was a little nervous.
Such a short acquaintance of two hours max is not sufficient to make notes on someone's behavior, particularly since Emily has only seen Raina under one circumstance and has nothing else to go by in her above statement. She also makes some bizarre assumptions about Raina's personality and her hometown not reflecting in it. The following statement made no sense in context and irritated me a bit:
“New York City,” she said. “Like, originally?” “Yeah,” she said. That struck me as odd. She seemed so quiet and docile to have come from such a frenetic place as New York.
Raina herself was a bit flat. Her personality only seemed to come out when she was sabotaged about midway through the book, which felt unfair to her. The single most annoying thing, however, was how she kept "mewling" or "she mewed". That is not how people talk in general conversation and it sounded like the author was starting to infantilize her much like Emily was. Her actions and her words didn't hold up as cohesive, from the same person, and one particular moment is when she tells Emily about her famous chef father and how she didn't want to tell anyone, but then almost immediately she does on camera. I threw up my hands at this point.
As this is heavily based on the show Top Chef, with a possible theme or two thrown in from other popular cooking competitions, I had to wonder at some of the things that happened in the book, such as the huge freedom the contestants had in leaving the loft where they were staying. Emily even makes a comment about this:
Lucky for me I didn’t have to bring as much as the other chefs, seeing as I could just take the Blue Line to my apartment if I happened to forget something.
I've never heard of a show like this allowing the people competing on it to wander around the host city during filming, much less with no cameras or chaperones. Putting aside the fact that they're technically employed by the network and not being supervised could get the network in trouble if there's an accident off set, Emily and Raina could easily have spilled secrets about the production before the show even began to air.
Timing was an issue too, not least in regards to the show. The whole book takes place over six weeks, but the show doesn't air live and yet, two episodes or so before the finale, there's a mention about the episodes starting to premiere. There's no way that a weekly show would've been able to squash itself into less than a month. It was a bit jarring, trying to figure that whole mess out.
Hot Chef itself started out alright, but quickly devolved into Top Chef fanfiction. Not only is the setup nearly identical, as far as I can tell, there are several characters that are clones of the real people and not disguised very well (their initials are literally the same as their fictional counterparts, in addition to physical descriptions that match). I think that the creativity of the book suffered because it relied to heavily on established persons and scenarios.
There was an unresolved story line regarding a predatory producer on the show that bugged me. Everything else, if not to my satisfaction, was at least ended. Happily ever after romance, someone wins, etc. Dale, however, was never censured for his behavior, nor was one of his minions that also participated in sabotaging the contest. It just kind of disappeared, though Raina makes a vague comment about it near the end. Other than that, nothing. The show taped everything else, but no one catches this slimy bastard or tapes it or sees it? Raina was hooked up to a mic the whole time and that's not nothing.
It feels like this book tried really hard to be an expose of reality cooking shows. While it might well have done that in some respects, that's not what this novel was billed as. For a book that takes place almost wholly within a cooking competition, there was a surprising lack of actual cooking scenes in the book.
Instead of slapping a flimsy mask over real personalities and real places and shows, I wish the author was being more creative, a better story teller overall. The sex scenes were a bit over the top sentimentality wise, but decently written. If the book as a whole were fleshed out more, some editorial mistakes corrected, and Emily's creepy remarks about Raina fixed, then I think this book could've been really good.
July 13, 2017
This was a pretty cute novella - as a fan of the Food Network, I got a kick out of it. But it's got a few glaring issues.
My main one is how flat the two leads are. It's like they sprang forth from the gay-void, fully formed. All we know is that they love food and ladies. That's it.
Like, A Thing that competitions do is bring family members onto the show for an emotional moment, right? So when it happens here, they bring on protag's sister who we've heard ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT, which makes that moment fall flat on it's face. We don't know what her parents were like, what kind of relationship she and her sister have, etc etc
Also the various adjectives used to describe how meek the LI - "mewling" is used a lot - is the mental equivalent of steel wool. It's very unpleasant.
So yeah, I wish there was more substance to the characters instead of the vague navel gazing rambling that the protag falls into. And I was hoping for an epilogue about the protag meeting
If you've got Kindle Unlimited, and you like food network and lesbians, give this a chance but wow it isn't worth paying anything for.
My main one is how flat the two leads are. It's like they sprang forth from the gay-void, fully formed. All we know is that they love food and ladies. That's it.
Like, A Thing that competitions do is bring family members onto the show for an emotional moment, right? So when it happens here, they bring on protag's sister who we've heard ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT, which makes that moment fall flat on it's face. We don't know what her parents were like, what kind of relationship she and her sister have, etc etc
Also the various adjectives used to describe how meek the LI - "mewling" is used a lot - is the mental equivalent of steel wool. It's very unpleasant.
So yeah, I wish there was more substance to the characters instead of the vague navel gazing rambling that the protag falls into. And I was hoping for an epilogue about the protag meeting
If you've got Kindle Unlimited, and you like food network and lesbians, give this a chance but wow it isn't worth paying anything for.
October 10, 2016
Not much creativity.
Not much creativity. Not enough substance. The Top Chef riff was too much of the book. Doesn't move me to search out more by the author.
Not much creativity. Not enough substance. The Top Chef riff was too much of the book. Doesn't move me to search out more by the author.
January 10, 2018
Some of the dialogue was super cheesy but honestly what did me in where the sex euphemisms.
September 5, 2019
Perfect
When you're looking for a romance novel, you're looking for an easy read with loveable characters, fabulous settings, a few tropes, a few tense moments, and some good old-fashioned HEA. Nicolette Dane always delivers, and this book is no exception. I was rooting for the LI to win this competition as much as the protagonist was, and she was a delightful character in her own right. A fun book, and a perfect distraction.
When you're looking for a romance novel, you're looking for an easy read with loveable characters, fabulous settings, a few tropes, a few tense moments, and some good old-fashioned HEA. Nicolette Dane always delivers, and this book is no exception. I was rooting for the LI to win this competition as much as the protagonist was, and she was a delightful character in her own right. A fun book, and a perfect distraction.
February 19, 2021
Not bad, not the best of Dane's works, but still not that bad. It had some cool side characters and a pretty good lead. I was a bit confused at times with who the main character, Emily, was talking to when talking directly to the audience. I pictured her giving a speech when she was like 70 years old to her grandchildren about how she met her wife. Other than that, I really liked this and would read this again.
August 25, 2020
Enjoyable!
This was the perfect book to sit down with and read for the afternoon or evening. I've enjoyed everything I've read from author Nicolette Dane. I recommend her books for your must read list!
This was the perfect book to sit down with and read for the afternoon or evening. I've enjoyed everything I've read from author Nicolette Dane. I recommend her books for your must read list!
November 16, 2016
I absolutely appreciated all the Chicago references. :)
It was a good read and an easy one. It isn't the best book I've read lately, but it certainly kept me interested and entertained. I watch a lot of Food Network, so the challenge part of it made sense. I don't feel like the characters had a ton of depth, but again, I didn't have super high expectations from a romance novel.
It was a good read and an easy one. It isn't the best book I've read lately, but it certainly kept me interested and entertained. I watch a lot of Food Network, so the challenge part of it made sense. I don't feel like the characters had a ton of depth, but again, I didn't have super high expectations from a romance novel.
May 24, 2017
Very sweet
I so enjoyed this story. It was sweet. I liked that there wasn't a lot of excess drama with the characters or the plot.
I so enjoyed this story. It was sweet. I liked that there wasn't a lot of excess drama with the characters or the plot.
August 18, 2017
Fun read
My wife watches all the cooking shows and this book was a nice romance paired with a good cooking show and I actually understood all the cooking terms.
My wife watches all the cooking shows and this book was a nice romance paired with a good cooking show and I actually understood all the cooking terms.
June 15, 2019
Light, fun story
A good, entertaining story with interesting characters. It was a very enjoyable & easy to read. I recommend this book.
A good, entertaining story with interesting characters. It was a very enjoyable & easy to read. I recommend this book.
August 2, 2019
Great!
Loved the book! Highly recommended ang aurely you will also enjoy it like I did. Good Job, Nico! More books to read.
Loved the book! Highly recommended ang aurely you will also enjoy it like I did. Good Job, Nico! More books to read.
March 16, 2020
Hot, Hot Chef
A quick and easy read, lovable characters, and one very good sex scene make Hot Chef an excellent read. I really enjoyed it! There are a few bits of profoundly good life advice/words of wisdom in Heroine Emily’s narration, which isn’t what I expected but absolutely adored.
A quick and easy read, lovable characters, and one very good sex scene make Hot Chef an excellent read. I really enjoyed it! There are a few bits of profoundly good life advice/words of wisdom in Heroine Emily’s narration, which isn’t what I expected but absolutely adored.
October 28, 2016
top chefs from around the country compete to see who is the new Hot Chef. among the chefs is Emily from Chicago and Raina from NY. from a distance, Emily thought that Raina was cute. They even got to room together. As the competition heats up so does their feeling for each other.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews