Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A charming new LGBTQIA+ romcom from the bestselling author of BOYFRIEND MATERIAL.
Audrey Lane is perfectly fine. Really. So what if she left her high-powered job as a Very Important Journalist—and her even higher-powered long-term girlfriend—to live a quiet life as a reporter for the second-biggest newspaper in Shropshire? And so what if she keeps hearing that same higher-powered long-term now-ex-girlfriend in her head night and day, constantly judging just how small Audrey's allowed her life to become?
She's fine. She's happy. She's perfectly within her groove. Do not-in-their-groove people get weekday drunk and impulsively apply for the UK's most beloved baking show?
All right, so maybe she's not completely fine, but being on Bake Expectations is opening her world again in ways she never anticipated. First through fellow contestant Doris, whose personal story of queer love during WW2 captures Audrey's heart, imagination and journalistic interest like nothing has in ages. Then through Jennifer Hallet, the most foul-tempered (and fouler-mouthed) producer, woman, and menace Audrey has ever met. Jennifer should be off-limits, but her fire lights something unexpected inside of Audrey, making her want to burn back a million times brighter. A million times hotter. A million times more herself than she's been in a long, long time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hall's dramatic third and final installment of his Winner Bakes All series (after Paris Daillencourt Is About to Crumble) juxtaposes two toxic yet still endearing lesbian romances. Struggling small-town reporter Audrey Lane impulsively applied to the reality show competition Bake Expectations partly to prove herself to her judgmental ex-girlfriend. Now that she's on set, she can't turn off her reporter's curiosity, and solicits a melancholy story from elderly fellow contestant Doris, who lived at the estate where the show is filmed as service staff in the 1940s and '50s and became the friend and romantic plaything of the young mistress of the house. Meanwhile, Audrey locks horns over the story, and everything else, with Jennifer Hallet, the show's bristly producer—until their crackling antagonistic energy pivots into fast, no-strings-attached hookups. Though the food descriptions are mouthwatering, readers looking for the romantic tweeness that is a staple of baking romances won't find it here, and, unfortunately, Audrey and Jennifer's angry sex doesn't have quite the spark it needs to convince. Still, Hall's characters are full of sharp humor and over-the-top charisma, and the plot skips some of the expected beats to offer surprises right through to the end. It may not be a high note for the series, but fans will still be satisfied.
