The Marriage Test

A dashed good romantic adventure, with a heaping side of swoon-worthy descriptions of food at its best! Sure, the hero's characterization is a little wooden and one-pitch, but eventually he shows his multifaceted parts.

A dashed good romantic adventure, with a heaping side of swoon-worthy descriptions of food at its best! Sure, the hero's characterization is a little wooden and one-pitch, but eventually he shows his multifaceted parts.

Someone recommended this somewhere so I thought I'd check it out because of the cooking angle. It's pretty ridiculous though, even for a romance novel.

Basically what we have is Julia of Childress (no, I'm not kidding) who is THE MOST AMAZING COOK IN THE ENTIRE WORLD but she works in a convent and no one knows about her. Oh, and she is a (all together now) FIERY REDHEAD. Also, PEPPERY.

Then there's Griffin, aka THE BEAST OF GRANDAISE (OK, that's kind of awesome) who is a count or something and also apparently a supertaster! Which sucks for him because this is all happening in the middle ages and everything smells disgusting. So he goes around all the time with a metal nose-pincher thing on, and is in a REALLY BAD MOOD. And he LOVES show more PEPPER.

So what with one thing and another, Griffin basically buys her from the convent for a year and they go on this long trip back to his castle and get in a lot of stupid arguments and have sexy conversations about spices. And he constantly tries to tell her what to do and she constantly refuses to do it. And there's a lot of bathing in the river and knights eating wild rabbit and moaning.

At this point I had to stop reading because my lunch break was over, but I don't think I can take any more of it. show less

A historical romance set in the middle ages in France. Julia of Childress ends up being raised in a Convent where at a young age, because of her stubbornness she ends up in the kitchens where she finds her calling. The Abbey and she as the cook gains a reputation to the point that she is "bought" for a year to cook for the "Beast" of Gervais to be be returned to take her vows after training his kitchen staff to cook. Little does this Lord realize that in her efforts to not return to take her vows and instead to find love, Julia will use all of her wiles in the kitchen and beyond to beguile him and secure a place by his side.