A Dash of Salt and Pepper finished my 2022 on a high

 

Today I’m talking about a book that’s release actually caught me by surprise – A Dash of Salt and Pepper by Kosoko Jackson. I enjoyed Jackon’s last book, I’m So Not Over You, and I did follow him on Twitter and Instagram, but I somehow just missed this book’s release until like a week before it was due to come out. No idea how I managed it, but I did. Still, at least I managed to catch it and get it.

If Love Mechanics, that I read before this book, had nothing in the way of a blurb, I’m now so thankful to have anything for a blurb. The one here says that Xavier Reynolds is doing less than stellar. He just got dumped and was passed over for a prestigious fellowship. To top it all off, he’s back home in Harper’s Cove, Maine, population 9,000. The last thing he wants to do is work as a prep chef in the kitchen of the hip new restaurant in town: The Wharf. Especially since the hot, single-father chef who owns it can’t delegate to save his life. Then Logan (the father) doesn’t understand why every word out of Xavier’s mouth is sarcastic, but he has no choice but to hire Xavier since there are only so many onions his tween daughter, Anne, can mince. Stuck between a stove and a hot place, Logan and Xavier discover an unexpected connection. Basically, they’ll have to decide if they can make their relationship work or if life has seasoned them too differently.

It's giving very man meets man, Logan is struggling so has to hire Xavier and the two are forced together, but what the conflict would be, I wasn’t immediately sure. Perhaps that Logan’s restaurant is struggling and Xavier is down on his luck, or back home, Hallmark movie style, something like that?

Anyway, chapter one sees Xavier up at four am, he’s recently lost his job, and then three days after losing his job, his boyfriend of five years dumped him. In the span of like a month, his whole life as he knew it collapsed and he was back in his childhood home and town and homeboy is, understandably, not happy about it. Then at the end of the chapter, someone is in his kitchen. Chapter two has Logan coming into Xavier’s house – being the one in the kitchen – and Xavier thinks he’s breaking in. Xavier’s mum told him to come over but just didn’t think to tell Xavier. And then in chapter three, he’s talking to his friend Mya, who since she’s been in Harper’s Cove the whole time, who tells him about Logan.

This definitely isn’t enemies to lovers, more misunderstanding meaning they’re not on good terms to getting to better terms to lovers. There were also definitely times, had I been in Xavier’s shoes, where I would have either just cried or left. Like, homeboy was a stronger person than I am throughout this book. Then again, he takes the job in Logan’s restaurant (like the blurb says) because he needs the money, so he’s got a specific reason to stick it out and have that power to him.

Like I mentioned before, Love Mechanics was the last book I read and sadly didn’t enjoy. But this book had me chuckling at the bottom of the first page, and then again on page three. It got off to a really good start. I would honestly say that it stays at a solid good peak for the majority of the book. There is a bit later in this post where I will talk about where it dips, and I will elaborate on it more when I get to it.

This book felt realistic. I know that’s an odd thing to say, but since Xavier is 26, you’re seeing what it’s like for someone to struggle. I feel like with YA, some of the struggles I tend to see were things that I myself never struggled with, but with this it just felt different. Like Xavier was realistic with how we went into things, there wasn’t that perpetual optimism that I feel like some books go in with where everything conveniently works out without the struggle. Logan, the love interest, homeboy was flawed. That’s not a knock on how he was written; he was literally flawed as a person. He is raising a teenage daughter alone and trying to keep his restaurant above water, so you can understand the stress he’d be under from that alone. There is one moment, towards the end of the book, where one decision that he makes definitely made me not like him as much. It was another instance of where Xavier is a stronger person than I. Like, Xavier and I would have very different reactions to Logan, let me just say that.

There’s a moment in the book where Xavier asks whether they’re going to Portland. This in itself is fine, but as someone who is not from the US, when I think of Portland, I think of the city in Oregon on the West Coast. Now, since this book is set in Maine, on the East Coast, it’s understandable that would make me think that would be a cross-country trip. Turns out, the biggest city in Maine is also called Portland, and respectfully, who, outside of the US, would ever know that? This is basically a whole paragraph to say that this was a point in the book where I did just have to stop, thinking they were referring to Portland, Oregon, and go “huh?”.

I think out of the characters, Anne was definitely one of my favourites, if not my favourite. I don’t know what it is, but I like written children more than actual children. I feel like quite often, authors will just have more fun when writing children rather than the adults. It definitely felt like Jackson had fun with Anne. That’s not to say that the main characters were bad, they weren’t by any stretch, and they had a lot of personality to them, it was just that I liked Anne more. It’s like the characters were good and Anne was slay. In terms of Xavier, he’s in that age groups where he’s not gen Z, but he’s also not a millennial, like he’s on the cusp of both. Even then, Xavier definitely leant more towards millennial than gen Z. Like he loved The Devil Wears Prada and there was a reference to the “That’s what good pussy sounds like” vine. But that’s not a negative by any means, it’s just a fact of the age of the character. And while I did find relatability in the age and struggle of Xavier, I feel as though I tend to lean more towards gen Z than millennial personally.

There wasn’t really all that much in terms of conflict, and I only realised that once I was in the back third of the book. This isn’t one of those books where people just go about their lives, face nothing bad and have everything magically work out for them, there is conflict. But it’s very concentrated and almost all happens in the last 60 pages or so (this is also where I found all my issues with the book), and when it came to it, I did find myself wishing that it would have been stretched out a little longer than it was. I think had the conflict been stretched out a little longer, one issue I had, pertaining to Xavier’s decision in the end of the book, wouldn’t have been an issue as there would have been space to sit with the conflict. And then there is one specific event in this last stint of conflict where Xavier conveniently knew the solution. My issue, and mind you that this one is very minor (literally like an “Oh… okay…” kind of moment before I moved on) with this was that the solution led us to a location that Xavier told us that was well known in town, but this was the first instance we’d even been told about the location. Had we, the readers, known about the location beforehand, I wouldn’t have had this issue.

I realise that was a huge paragraph on my issues with the book, but keep in mind that it’s only two issues that were concentrated in one part of the book I had, and I really had nothing bad to say about the rest of the book. Ignoring those two issues, that aren’t deal breakers by any means, I really enjoyed this book. The reality is that those issues probably brought the book from a five to a four out of five. I still, personally, thought this was a really good book and I’d happily re-read it down the line.

Okay, bye!