Review - French Twist by Shawn Bailey

Chef Gage is under pressure. Both the baker and pastry chefs have quit, and Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching. Gage decides to take a risk on two recent culinary school graduates. The new pastry chef, Valentin, is not only very talented, he's very beautiful as well. Valentin isn't the kind of guy Gage is normally attracted to, but he can't seem to resist the young man.

“French Twist” is a barely novella-length story about finding love where you least expect it. Aside from the will-they or won't-they tension between Gage and Valintin, there's not much drama to the story.

The two main characters are believable enough. What stretches credulity is the restaurant where they work. A staff of 61 on duty on any given day seems hard to believe in a city where the average restaurant employs 15 people in total.

The text is full of minor grammatical or word errors. With so many tools available to check these basic things like unbalanced quotes, it seems crazy to publish a book with so many typos. There's at least one on every page. The errors aren't bad enough to disrupt your reading flow, but they are annoying. What was also annoying were the occasional pedantic moments when the author seemed merely to be trying to show off that they'd done some research. I don't think you really need to worry about whether or not people reading your story know what bouillabaisse is, let alone the details of how many kinds of fish are in it.

Despite the complaints, this is a fun little story you'll likely finish in one sitting. The short length probably means the minor annoyances won't add up to much before you finish.

“French Twist” is available from Smashwords or Amazon (commissionable link).