Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake

As usual, Alexis Hall has knocked it out of the park with another feel-good romance full of feels and laughs! But the UK Kindle edition is full of really irritating formatting errors, so I'd recommend picking up the paperback (or grabbing the US ebook edition from somewhere).

I read loads of good reviews and decided to read this anticipating Harry to be a breakdown of Harriet seeing as MC is bisexual. An upper class woman who left university after her first year due to an accidental pregnancy, she is crippled with doubt due to her parents negative thoughts of her ‘throwing her life away’ and not continuing her studies. Her daughter and ex support her and I have to admit I love her secondary characters more than Rosaline. She is crippled with worry that she isn’t good enough saying quite a lot of people accept this as a reality I find this a little demeaning. Alain she meets before anyone else on the way to her first week and makes up a story instead of admitting to her home life due to his upper class personality matching her parents. I love Anvita, Ricky and Harry such great characters and make Rosaline see that she’s worth more than she believes and about her parents and Alain. I won’t say I enjoyed how she treated Harry to start with her snobbishness was too much. Hope the next book is better

3.5 stars rounded up seems to be my norm for Alexis' rom-coms. This was a sort of 'rom-com' with a difference this time around inasmuch as the MC's were not gay men, but rather an unassuming bisexual woman and a couple of men, complete opposites, competing for her attention during a Bake Off competition. I should say straight away that IMHO Alain was a rich, slimy, pretentious wannabe who would no doubt feel quite at home with those nouveau-riche actor types in London [and the less said about that, the better], but we're talking about ordinary, hardworking people like Harry in this story of course...and I was very annoyed at the way Harry was portrayed actually. He seemed to be completely dumbed down, couldn't string a proper sentence together, was frowned upon for his London accent but seemed like a really nice guy who could bake, was polite to the other competitors and grappled with anxiety and self-doubt. I ask you Ladies and Gents...who would YOU want to get friendly with in front of the cameras...exhibit A who is far more likely to look down his nose at you, be condescending and rude, and snigger behind your back or exhibit B whom you COULD actually rely on to have your back? It was honestly a complete no-brainer for me and I was amazed it took Rosaline so long to work things out although to be fair she was struggling most of the time. I loved Anvita, Lauren and Amelie and although the producer of the series was a foul-mouthed bitch, she stood for no nonsense and really put Alain in his place later in the story when something happens that I and practically everyone else on the planet absolutely KNEW was coming, but a completely clueless Rosaline apparently didn't 😵😵. As usual, there were plenty of errors in the way the American publishers have dealt with Alexis' work. The actual English phrase for the title should be 'takes the biscuit' - it's by an English author and set in England, but I suppose Takes the Cake is far more obvious to US readers. 'Init' might mean something in the US but over here it's innit [and something I hate]. Oh, and realer?? Nope, just nope ... more real it is. Although I realise that Alexis needs to write this type of dumbed down, mass market story to make a living, I DO wish it wasn't so. I still feel that the Spires series and Prosperity, all of which appeared through Riptide Publishing, are his best works to date. Alexis, you are SO much better than Rom-coms, and one hit wonders from the USA Today school of popular fiction writers are not fit to lick your boots. 💕💕💕

I am spoiled by Hall's previous works, with his laugh out loud lines, quirky, fabulous characters and his ability to make me truly feel for them. I found Rosaline less compelling, too full of insecurities and the whole shame of being a single Mum rather overdone and tiresome. The concept of the baking show was a nice device, but seems like a vague backdrop for the real story of Rosaline's redemption...which I didn't believe she needed. I hope Hall returns to his witty, sexy, angsty style and themes and cracks out some of the prose that made me long to write as well as he does...original, comic, hot and heart wrenching. This was too Rom-Com and didn't even seem like his work.

I'm a huge fan of Alexis Hall, but I found this one different in a lot of ways from his other romances, but in a good way. Rosaline drove me crazy for a good part of the book with her inability to live her own life. For all her disdain for people who questioned her sexuality, she still projects the snobbishness and class superiority of her parents. So, her choice of architect Alain over good guy Harry because he's the guy her parents would like was annoying. Also, she's fairly oblivious to Alain's machinations for a smart woman. But that's what makes it a good story, too when she finally has that 'AHA' moment. So the baking competition scenes are just hysterical. When an author's writing makes me laugh out loud, I (and everyone around me) knows the book is great. This one made me laugh too many times to count. I'm glad the next book will also feature the judges and behind-the-scenes people from Bake Expectations because they are a hoot! It'll definitely be on my pre-order list.