Review:
Table for Two collects two of Nora Roberts' novels - Summer Desserts (originally published in 1985) and Lessons Learned (originally published in 1986). They don't just have an overall theme in common (cooking!) - Summer, the main female character of Summer Desserts, is friends with Carlo, the main male character of Lessons Learned.
Summer Desserts:
Summer Lyndon is a supremely confident dessert chef. Blake Cocharan is a supremely confident hotel owner. They both meet their match in each other. Blake needs someone to help him improve the menu at one of his new hotels and he's picked Summer for the job. The two of them are instantly attracted to each other, but Summer, who has spent her life watching her actress mother fall deliriously in love only for her relationships to fail in a few years or less, doesn't believe in love and is afraid of commitment.
Summer's mother's efforts to solve things and give her daughter a nudge towards her HEA could very easily have blown up in everyone's faces. In fact, in the real world it likely would have. Nora Roberts' families, of course, never fold that easily, at least on-page.
This was definitely the weaker of the two books. Summer and Blake's instant attraction did nothing for me, and I got downright annoyed when Blake tried to claim later that their work and sexual relationships had nothing to do with each other (dude, you're her boss!). The scenes with Summer working in the hotel kitchen were well-done, but I disliked that Summer's issues with her staff were resolved via an accident rather than through her own work and efforts.
Lessons Learned:
Carlo Franconi (introduced in the previous book as Summer's charming Italian chef friend) has a new cookbook coming out and will be spending a few weeks promoting it in the United States with his new publicist, Juliet Trent. Juliet has mapped out her career in detail - she's come a long way from the receptionist she was ten years ago, and in only two more years, she figures she can achieve her ultimate goal of owning her own public relations firm. More than anything, she doesn't want to end up like her mother, who gave up a promising career in nursing to become a stay-at-home mom.
Carlo is a complication she doesn't need, but he manages to charm her anyway. As she tries to remind herself that Carlo is only ever temporarily involved with women, Carlo comes to the realization that Juliet is rapidly becoming more vital to him than any previous woman he's been with.
Whereas the first book was a bit of a chore to get through, this one was delightful. Yes, it felt very much like a product of its time, and not just because Juliet thought of herself has an eighties woman multiple times - there was all the stuff about Juliet's efforts to build her career, and her fear that love/marriage could prompt her to abandon it all the way her mom had. However, Juliet was overall more relatable than Summer, and Carlo was just as charming as Roberts meant him to be.
Although their relationship technically developed pretty quickly (the publicity tour was only about three weeks long), it somehow felt more natural than Summer and Blake's insta-lust. I enjoyed seeing their interest in each other and respect for each other grow as they dealt with a generally jam-packed book tour schedule. One of my favorite moments was when flight delays prompted Juliet to come up with other ideas for Carlo's planned cooking demonstration - it helped (a lot) that Carlo was good at what he did, good with people, and generally unfazed by sudden changes to his schedule.
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