A La Carte (review)

Cooking is Lainey's life: she's grown up learning the ropes in her mother's restaurant, she's always trying new recipes, and she's dreaming of being the first female African American celebrity chef. The fly in the batter is her longterm crush on Simeon, her grade-school best friend and now a big question mark, since he mostly just turns up to borrow class notes at the last minute and chow down on her sample baked goods, but Lainey's devotion to him begins to lead her into carelessness that starts to damage her relationship with her mother. While this might at first seem to be a story about best friends turning to romance, Davis stealthily turns it into a more truthful tale of a girl stuck on a guy who's taking advantage of her. Since readers view the situation through narrator Lainey's eyes, they'll understand her position and share some of her bias even as they realize before she does that Simeon's all about Simeon. The tight relationship between mother (loving but definitely strict) and daughter (a complete novice at disobedience) is warmly depicted, but driven Lainey isn't just a nice girl being done wrong—she's clearly somewhat standoffish at school and even regularly rude to the son of her mother's friend, who turns out to be an okay guy when she finally gets to know him. Refreshingly, she doesn't end up in the arms of the unexpected boy either—the success here is Lainey's pulling herself together to aim for what she truly wants, and readers will be glad to see her really start to cook.