For fans of Jenny Han, Jane Austen, and The Great British Bake Off, A TASTE FOR LOVE is a delicious rom com about first love, familial expectations, and making the perfect bao.
A TASTE FOR LOVE
by Jennifer Yen
Razorbill/Penguin Young Readers, February 2021 (voir catalogue)
To her friends, high school senior Liza Yang is nearly perfect. Smart, kind, and pretty, she dreams big and never shies away from a challenge. But to her mom, Liza is anything but. Compared to her older sister Jeannie, Liza is stubborn, rebellious, and worst of all, determined to push back against all of Mrs. Yang’s traditional values, especially when it comes to dating. The one thing mother and daughter do agree on is their love of baking. Mrs. Yang is the owner of Houston’s popular Yin & Yang Bakery. With college just around the corner, Liza agrees to help out at the bakery’s annual junior competition to prove to her mom that she’s more than her rebellious tendencies once and for all. But when Liza arrives on the first day of the bake-off, she realizes there’s a catch: all of the contestants are young Asian American men her mother has handpicked for Liza to date. The bachelorette situation Liza has found herself in is made even worse when she happens to be grudgingly attracted to one of the contestants; the stoic, impenetrable, annoyingly hot James Wong. As she battles against her feelings for James, and for her mother’s approval, Liza begins to realize there’s no tried and true recipe for love.
Jennifer Yen lives in Houston, Texas with her family. By day, she stays busy with her work as a doctor, splitting her time between academia and private practice, specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. By night, she is a passionate writer dedicated to working on her next book, with hopes of bringing a little magic into the world of each of her readers.
Magic is harder than it looks. Now that Moth has discovered the secret family history at the heart of Founder’s Bluff, it’s time to adjust to her life as a beginner-level witch. She gets more and more fed-up with her basement-low middle school status and the daily mocking that comes with it, until she discovers a powerful charm that can basically turn her “cool.” And it works! But there’s a catch. An ancient, demonic catch. The charm releases a cool, but wicked and tricky Shadow Moth who only wants to take over Moth’s life. With the help of the Shadow, Moth acquires new, cool friends, totally owns her bullies, and gets a chance at the coveted Founderella crown, the ultimate symbol of Founder’s Bluff popularity. Will Moth get everything she thought she ever wanted? Or will Shadow Moth eat her first?
Once upon a time, a girl named Sophie rode into the forest with the queen’s huntsman. Her lips were the color of ripe cherries, her skin as soft as new-fallen snow, her hair as dark as midnight. When they stopped to rest, the huntsman took out his knife . . . and took Sophie’s heart. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Sophie had heard the rumors, the whispers. They said she was too kind and foolish to rule — a waste of a princess. A disaster of a future queen. And Sophie believed them. She believed everything she’d heard about herself, the poisonous words people use to keep girls like Sophie from becoming too powerful, too strong . . . With the help of seven mysterious strangers, Sophie manages to survive. But when she realizes that the jealous queen might not be to blame, Sophie must find the courage to face an even more terrifying enemy, proving that even the darkest magic can’t extinguish the fire burning inside every girl, and that kindness is the ultimate form of strength.