Early Review – My Fine Fellow by Jennieke Cohen (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 343 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: January 11, 2022
ASIN: B0928YDL1S
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from Edelweiss
Rating: 3/5 stars
“It’s 1830s England, and Culinarians—doyens who consult with society’s elite to create gorgeous food and confections—are the crème de la crème of high society.
Helena Higgins, top of her class at the Royal Academy, has a sharp demeanor and an even sharper palate—and knows stardom awaits her if she can produce greatness in her final year.
Penelope Pickering is going to prove the value of non-European cuisine to all of England. Her contemporaries may scorn her Filipina heritage and her dishes, but with her flawless social graces and culinary talents, Penelope is set to prove them wrong.
Elijah Little has nothing to his name but a truly excellent instinct for flavors. London merchants won’t allow a Jewish boy to own a shop, so he hawks his pasties for a shilling a piece to passersby—but he knows with training he can break into the highest echelon of society.
When Penelope and Helena meet Elijah, a golden opportunity arises: to pull off a project never seen before, and turn Elijah from a street vendor to a gentleman chef.
But Elijah’s transformation will have a greater impact on this trio than they originally realize—and mayhem, unseemly faux pas, and a little romance will all be a part of the delicious recipe.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this through Edelweiss to review.
Thoughts: This sounded like such a fun premise to me. This is a retelling of My Fair Lady, but in an alternate world where food and the Culinarians reign supreme. In this case Helena takes on a street urchin, Elijah, and is determined to turn him into a gentleman chef. Of course, things don’t go quite as Helena plans.
I ended up being a bit disappointed in this. It takes quite a bit for the story to get going and then all the training Elijah goes through gets a bit long as well. In addition to that you have to slog through quite a names (mostly royalty of the time). I did end up liking the second half of the book a bit better and I enjoyed how it ended.
Helena is a hard character to love and it was hard to watch Elijah try to bend to her teaching and whims. Penelope (a fellow culinary student who is Helena’s friend) does help to temper Elijah’s experience and I enjoyed the friendship that Elijah and Penelope formed. However, in general I found these characters a bit frustrating.
This took me quite a while to read; it just wasn’t one of those books I really wanted to pick up and read. I had to force myself to sit down and read it but once I got into it I did enjoy some of what I read. The writing just didn’t flow all that well, although I do appreciate what the author was trying to do here.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay. I liked the concept and it was well thought out. I just felt like it was a bit slow and a bit unrealistic at times, I also felt that the characters were frustrating to read about. Lastly, the writing was a bit difficult to get into and didn’t flow all that well. Still, I did enjoy some aspects of the story. I guess I would recommend this if a retelling of “My Fair Lady” with some twists sounds really exciting to you.
