"Because even though I'm a grumpy bastard who stomps all over people's dreams, sometimes I just want a cuddle, you know?"
I hate ice cream. Ever since my fiancée left me at the altar and skewered me in her bestseller “Embrace Your Inner Ice Cream Sandwich: Finding the Positive You in a World of Negativity,” I haven’t been able to stomach the stuff.
Unfortunately, my five-year-old niece is a budding foodie and her favorite place in the world is Ginger Scoops, a cutesy Asian ice cream shop. Since I’ve been looking after my niece a lot lately, I’ve spent too much time there, sipping black coffee, refusing to eat ice cream, and trying not to look at the owner, Chloe Jenkins. Chloe is obnoxiously cheerful, and I can’t stand her.
Naturally, I end up kissing her.
But I’ve sworn off women after the fiasco with my ex-fiancée, and I’m convinced I’m no good at relationships. Still, with Chloe I’m tempted to do the impossible: give love and ice cream another chance…
The premise of this book is a bit weird at first, a guy is left in the altar and then his ex fiance goes on to write a very famous book about "embracing your inner ice cream sandwich" and that's why he hates ice cream. This sounds incredibly funny and, like I said, a bit weird, but I'm a super big fan of Jackie Lau and when I went into this book I knew what I was about to read was going to be well written and from an unique perspective. And that was definitely what I got. Jackie Lau has a wonderful way of introducing you to characters that you immediately feel connected to. And it's true that we met some of these characters in the first book in the series but in this book I felt like I linked to them in a deeper level. I understood them even if they made decisions that were so different from the ones I would make and I felt like I knew them from the beginning. Like I mentioned, the hero in this story is Drew. A grumpy Chinese-Canadian guy who hates ice cream but who is taking care of his niece who loves food and specifically this new Asian ice cream shop that was opened by Chloe, our bisexual, biracial heroine who is following her new dream of managing this business, honoring her late mother's Chinese heritage.
These two characters are opposites in a lot of ways but have a lot of things in common. They are very melancholic and emotional. They bring a lot of good things from each other. But Drew doesn't think he deserves to be with anyone because he will melt someone's "ice cream sandwich" (yes, her ex's book is self-help), he definitely had a lot of things to figure out. And Chloe as well. Also, there were a lot of people who hurt them and who managed to give them some really big insecurity issues. And seeing their development into being more independent and well rounded people was incredibly interesting. I also absolutely adored the descriptions of food and the ice creams and I am not at all an ice cream person. The ideas for the flavors and the intricate metaphors and connections that were made made me extremely happy. I adored her first book in the series The Ultimate Pi Day Party and this one was a wonderful companion and I loved seeing the characters from the first book in this one as well!
As I mentioned, I adore how Jackie Lau writes. You can tell she actually really cares about her characters and gives them complex and multidimensional lives and personalities. Specially in the relationship that Chloe has with her family and the life that she has after the death of her mother. I always love how she writes her biracial heroines and how she writes about the lack of representation or the lack of a community that they can find of people who look and can have similar experiences to theirs. I appreciated that she added Michelle in this book, who talked about her experiences from another point of view and who saw herself in Chloe and that was a very important moment. Being biracial also impacts her relationship with her father and those conversations were some of the most captivating and profound in this book. Jackie Lau always makes me feel such a large range of emotions and manages to write sexy, adorable and complex couples but also beautiful family relationships and friendships and I can't wait to read more from her!
