Review: Simmer Down

Thank you Berkley Romance for the ARC of Simmer Down! Releases October 13th!

Rating: Five stars! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Steam rating: 🔥🔥🔥

OMG *swoon* I LOVED every second of this book! One of my favorites of the year for sure. 🥰🥰🥰 

I really loved Sarah's debut last year, Faker was a really delightful hate-to-love and I adored that the heroine was Filipino. As someone who is 1/4th Filipino, I always love to find Filipino characters in romance and I so appreciate that Berkley is publishing authors like Sarah and more #ownvoices romances! I also really enjoyed Sarah's self-published novella, If You Never Come Back, so I had really high expectations going into Simmer Down.

Oh my gosh, I think I spent this entire book grinning like an idiot (and crying at some points because I was so attached to the characters). I should have seen the crying coming, honestly I've cried at some point during each of Sarah's books. Something about her writing just gives me all the feels! Simmer Down is Sarah at her best, I LOVED everything about this story! But beware, it will make you crave Filipino food like crazy. I read it last month and I still have a lumpia craving.  

The beginning of this story is completely delightful, Nikki and Callum really seem to hate each other, and I loved it so much. It's been a long time since I've read a hate-to-love where the characters really disliked each other in a way that made me so happy as I read. That seems weird, but there's a fine line for me with characters just being mean to each other and this was the perfect balance for me. Callum comes off so grumpy in the beginning and how they interacted was total catnip. Having them work at competing food trucks in Maui was such a fresh twist, especially once they went viral on social media. I adored the plot so much! 

There are some pretty heavy discussions of grief, Nikki and her mom are both still learning to cope following her fathers death from cancer. I really appreciated how Nikki and her mom interacted with each other, the way Sarah writes Filipino families is one of my favorite aspects of her writing! 

I will say at one point this story made me squeal with happiness, it takes a pretty intense forced proximity turn and it was EVERYTHING! Just the perfect addition to this story. I loved how Nikki and Callum expanded their relationship into a romance. The pacing was great, the side characters were great, seriously I can't stop gushing about how much I loved every single aspect of this book.

I highly recommend putting Simmer Down on your TBR and preordering it! Simmer Down was a five star read for me and one of my favorite romances of the year so far.