Brave Chef Brianna

Brianna’s ailing father, a renowned chef, challenges Brianna and her 15 older brothers to each establish a successful restaurant and inherit the family name and reputation. Brianna has only just graduated from culinary school so, broke and unestablished anywhere, she ends up in Monster City where rent is cheap. But how welcoming will monsters be to human cuisine?

I grabbed this on a whim as I was prowling through my library’s shelves last week. Who can resist a bright and cheerful cover that also portrays monsters? Not me.

This was really cute and contained important messages about friendship; overcoming self-doubt; and living for your own ideals of happiness, not those dictated by someone else.

Brianna was a well-developed character show more who looks sweet on the outside but who is plagued by demons of self-doubt that make her lash out at others. She’s in a stressful situation and the youngest in a family of thirteen. It’s understandable. But she learns her lessons and makes her apologies and tries to grow and be a better person. The supporting characters also showed growth and they were a lot of fun to read about as well.

The illustrations are beautifully done in the same style as the cover. I loved looking at the monsters and seeing them contrasted against Brianna’s cute little cafe.

This is a standalone graphic novel as far as I can tell. I enjoyed it so much that I’m slightly disappointed.

I highly recommend this for readers who struggle with their own self-doubt and especially for anyone who is as drawn to that cute cover as I am. For those who enjoy cooking, there are even four recipes from the book included at the end. show less

I feel torn on this.

On the one hand, Brianna is likable and her shortcomings are relateable. There is a feel-good story in here about believing in yourself and doing things because they make you happy, not to impress someone else (even if that someone else is your celebrity chef father.)

On the other hand, there's kind of a weird undercurrent of racism and gentrification in here that left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. The monsters were persecuted and basically forced into this ghetto called Monster City, where they make their own society apart from humans. The top chef there (Madame Cron) is a monster who remembers the days of persecution, being driven from their homes, etc. (She's also the brownest character in the book.) Now this show more rich, blonde human comes in and starts a restaurant that ignores their laws, takes business away from monster businesses, etc. And Madame Cron doesn't like it. And I get why she doesn't like it! There's a little bit of lip service paid to her background explaining why she hates humans so much, but she doesn't manage to escape her role as the bad guy, trying to take Brianna (and her restaurant,) down.

I'm not saying that the author is a racist, or that Brianna is an unlikable character, or that she's doing something bad on purpose, but the story IS problematic IMO. Maybe Sam Sykes meant to flesh out Madame Cron more and make her more sympathetic and less of a villain, but just didn't end up doing that. I don't know. But I found myself agreeing with her throughout the book, and feeling like all the people (and monsters) telling her to get over the subjugation of their people (because it was so long ago) were being total jerks. And Brianna should have had to realize that she was at least somewhat in the wrong here.

THAT ALL BEING SAID. It was otherwise fun. And cute. The art is colorful and eye-catching. But it could be better. 2 1/2 stars. show less

I was slightly troubled throughout this story - I had some issue with the fact that this is basically the story of a marginalized community being invaded by a privileged person.

If you can ignore that, it's a cute story about friendship and finding yourself.

There were also some weird unexplored threads that I wish Sykes had done more with, particularly with the brother and the father (who was supposed to be this mysterious figure, and when finally revealed, I had no clue if I was supposed to know who he was).

This was an adorable graphic novel about a girl with fifteen brothers who has to open her own restaurant and have it be more successful than the other fifteen in order to win the family legacy. Only, Brianna ends up opening her restaurant in Monster City, where she's almost the only human.

I liked the art style and I loved the characters, but I felt like the plot was lacking, a lot. I mean, part of the conflict in the story is that monsters can't legally eat sugar, flour or cooked meat, but like.... there are plenty of human foods without those? There are humans who are vegetarian, or can't eat sugar and flour? There are other options! Brianna could just... use those, instead of having the illegal substances in her restaurant?? This was show more something that I just really couldn't get over. My suspension of disbelief covered the monsters, but not this part.

Suzan is awesome, though.

(Also: If you want to read this, be aware that the main character is very insecure and anxious, which was nice to see because she kept on fighting despite that, but there is A LOT of self-hate, including internalised fatphobia that could be triggering.) show less

It deals directly with racism in a decent way, and the characters are cute. However, if this is a one-off I would be pretty unsatisfied. It ends with a lot of loose ends, and the one regarding the racism of the fantasy world would have really benefited from some closure. I'd have appreciated some closure with other characters, too, like Brianna's dad, her brother, and the budding romance between the other two side characters.

Read this one to my daughters. We read it spaced out between other books. I like the depiction of anxiety. It also touches on discrimination, but in a puzzling way. Overall I thought it was decent, though not fantastic. It was also cool that it includes recipes at the end. A comic book with recipes!

My six-year-old said: "One star, I mean two."

My three-year-old said: "Five stars."

My kids' comments make me think it may have been too mature for the older one, and that the younger one doesn't understand star ratings.

Really great representation of self doubt, fear, and depression in a book with a fun setting and characters.