I wanted to like this more than I did and really struggled through the latter half of the story, but I just really did not feel all that much chemistry between the leads. The back and forth they go through would have been hard to witness for just about any couple, but especially one that felt as fragile as these two. Hopefully others will find more enjoyment out of this and I'm sure it works for a lot of people, but just not for me.

I really liked both of these characters, just not together. It seemed like 1 step forward, 3 steps back. I had a hard time seeing the chemistry between Mallory and Stef. I loved the food aspect and the anxiety of this book but it just did come together for me.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC

This story's been pretty interesting, with two characters who were total opposites at first, but they ended up working through their differences.

Stef's a chef who got caught up in a totally awkward TV show situation. It went viral, but in a bad way, and now it's really hurting her career. She's such a positive, active person who always lends a hand, especially in the kitchen. It's her love language. Her friends want her to succeed in her career, but for that to happen, people need to forget about her TV blunder and that hilarious meme of her that pops up whenever you Google her name. So, a friend connects her with Mallory, a video artist with a really complex inner world, but she'll be able to create a YouTube channel where Stef can show off her cooking skills.

They're like night and day, those two. Stef can't seem to get Mallory to react to her attempts to connect. But Stef's persistent, and little by little, she's making headway. It's a struggle, but it's pretty cool to watch.

As someone who has bouts of anxiety, I found that the character of Mallory was very well-written. She has an extreme form of anxiety, and the author describes all of her anxious thoughts as bees - which I thought was clever and fascinating. The dynamic between her and the other main character of Stef was believable, and the progression of their romantic relationship was understandably slow.

I liked how Mal and Stef's story revolved around making home cooking videos for YouTube. The story had bursts of humor and a little bit of spice. Overall enjoyable!

Thanks to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the ARC!

This story!! Nan Campbell somehow put a lot of things I love personally into her characters. I mean…give me a book about a chef cooking yummy food and I’m interested. Combine that with an artsy filmmaker struggling with anxiety, a truly sweet connection and a dash of severe spicyness and I don’t know how fast to turn those pages!

I received an advance copy from Netgalley for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Stef’s career as a high end chef is tanked ever since she became a meme. A meme! Yes, an image of her as a blubbering mess on national tv has been haunting her for two years now. Stef was competing in the cooking show Kitchen Ballers until she got chewed out by a celebrity chef and has been forever since known as the Kitchen Bawler. How embarrassing. No top restaurant would hire her after that and that’s why she is slacking away at a horrible chain restaurant making mediocre food. It’s time to change. Making her own YouTube cooking series a success should result in her name getting cleansed of that terrible moniker. Stef recruits talented filmmaker Mallory to create the content with. Mallory is a mystery. She seems shy and refuses to eat Stef’s food, but somehow she is also the sweetest and most intriguing woman Stef has met in a long, long time.

Mallory is wasting her talent by working weddings as a videographer. Her own creative filmproject has been years in the making and is nowhere near finished. Mal has been struggling with major anxiety since she was a kid. Her brain has to compete with an intrusive and debilitating maelstrom of thoughts that can overpower her at any moment and make it impossible to function normally. Mal has a few things that give her a semblance of control: not touching strangers and being very selective in her food choices. Why oh why then did she accept a job filming cooking videos with a woman that lives for food and for whom touch is a second language. Stef is Mallory’s opposite in every way. Maybe people were on to something though, because it’s absolutely true. Opposites do attract.

Mallory’s anxiety and how it limits her everyday life is a big part of the story. The analogy of the bees that Campbell uses is amazing. I don’t have anxiety myself, but many of my friends do. I feel like I understand them so much better now. The bees swarming in at any given moment to take over your mind and torment you with your own thoughts? A haunting and breathtaking image.

Ok, let’s talk food! Stef’s absolute love for all things delicious is addictive. She gave me Nigella Lawson vibes with her sassy way of presenting and seducing the camera with her food and sensual looks. I would have seriously elbowed Mallory out of the way for a chance to taste Stef’s mouthwatering dishes.

Mallory’s job as a videographer has a lot of similarities to my own line of work. For instance, it was fun to read about all the little tricks Mallory uses to make sure someone is as natural as possible in front of a camera. I’ve literally done exactly that in real life!

The physical connection between Stef and Mallory is so different from the usual romance books. Touch is a difficult sensation for Mal but as the story progresses the trust that is building between her and Stef simultaneously grows her need for touch. Stef is an absolute heroin with her everlasting patience. She is amazing in dealing with Mal’s insecurities but is also strong in her sense of self to speak up when needed.

It is so important to have stories that include topics like anxiety and other mental health problems. They help remove the stigma. They are truly a normal part of every day life and of being human. Most of us really need to hear that. What better way than to get that message wrapped up in a beautiful, entertaining story!

With Hot Honey Love Campbell has, again, written an exceptional story. A story that deals with some very serious issues, but is somehow still a light, joyous read. That shows you what a seriously skilled author Nan Campbell is!

Nan Campbell dishes up a real treat with her latest novel, Hot Honey Love. She takes huge helpings of passion, ambition, and personal struggle, creatively whisks them together, then tenderly simmers the mixture over a low flame for 312 pages. The result is a tantalizing romance that’s sure to capture the taste buds of even the most finicky reader.

Chef Stef Lombardozzi’s journey begins with an epically humiliating setback. After a disastrous appearance on a cooking competition show, she becomes known as “The Kitchen Bawler” and turns into an internet meme. When people Google her name, neverending clips of her crying come popping up on the screen. This traumatizing moment of humiliation not only continues to affect her career and her self-esteem, but it looks as if it’s never going away. Ultimately, with encouragement from a friend, it serves as a catalyst for change and pushes her to reclaim her dignity and respect as a chef.

As the plot unfolds, the introduction of Mallory Radowski adds another layer of complexity to the narrative. Mallory grapples with trust, anxiety, and a complicated relationship with food. These issues weigh heavily on her, even holding her back from completing a passion film project. Instead, she contents herself with videotaping weddings for a living. After a run-in with an old friend, she reluctantly agrees to film Stef’s YouTube cooking videos. However, when asked on camera to taste Stef’s food, Mallory’s pickiness makes it difficult for her to appreciate the culinary creations. Campbell capitalizes on this unique situation, scripting scenes that showcase moments filled with frustration, humor, and tenderness.

Stef and Mallory’s relationship is well-developed and portrayed with sensitivity and depth. As Mallory learns to trust Stef, feelings begin to develop within both women. Their dynamic becomes increasingly engaging as they navigate their creative partnership, moving from professional to personal. Readers witness the affection and concern grow between them. Campbell effectively captures the nuances of this evolving relationship, scripting scenes that allow for genuine moments of connection and vulnerability. Most importantly, she is patient with her development; she doesn’t rush these two characters. She gives them time to grow—as individuals and as a couple. The result is a romance that feels genuine and relatable.

Final remarks…

Hot Honey Love reminds readers that sometimes love can be wonderfully transformative, changing life in powerful ways. Campbell delivers a resonating narrative, one filled with humor and insight. She keeps things contemporary and fresh, cleverly introducing social media and YouTube into the mix. Her leading ladies are captivating, relatable women, and their journey is scripted with sensitivity and thoughtfulness. By exploring themes of vulnerability, trust, personal growth, and love, she manages to tell a story that is touching and heartfelt. This novel deserves two thumbs up.

Strengths….

Told with compassion and sensitivity
Likable, compelling characters
Fantastic story world
Well-developed romance
Layered and dynamic storytelling

Hot Honey Love is a very gripping story. Stef has a problem, she is stuck in a job she hates and her dream of being an award winning chef is slipping further away after a disastrous appearance on a cooking show. She needs a change of image and her work mate suggests Mallory, wedding film maker and budding cinematographer might be able to get her socials heading in the right direction and rid her of her bad meme image.. Mallory suffers from anxiety and has a very limited diet, where as Stef feels her love language is food. These women are the very opposite when it comes to food, so it’s a struggle at first.

Campbell has written a beautiful slow burn love story, filled with deep emotions as we watch Stef break down Mallory’s emotional walls. I really enjoyed watching them fall in love and seeing their lives blossom. I highly recommend this.

This was a fun, angsty but light contemporary sapphic romance featuring Stef, an energetic, extroverted chef who goes viral for all the wrong reasons for bawling on the kitchen competition show Kitchen Ballers. She's stuck working at the bland restaurant chain Pasta Palooza and she wants the celebrity restaurant chef life she'd dreamed of. Seeking to repair her image, she hatches a brilliant plan to produce a YouTube channel about cooking. Her friend hooks her up with Mallory, a filmmaker stuck doing wedding videography, to film the channel.

The pair has an instant connection despite being opposites in every way. Mallory is introverted and reserved, artistic, the grumpy to Stef's sunshine who is drawn in by her light. She also suffers from generalized anxiety disorder, which she depicts as a swarm of bees buzzing in her head. She also has an aversion to most food and to touch, and her parents were distant and always busy.

In contrast, exuberant Stef, who cries easily when overwhelmed with emotion, comes from a loud, loving and accepting big Italian family (the accepting big family was refreshing) and she loves to touch.

The two are immediately attracted to each other's competence in their fields even though they know nothing about them. I love the competence trope.

The butch/femme representation in this is also wonderful. Love seeing more rep of masc-presenting lesbians.

Another reviewer described this as a slow burn but we must have very different ideas of what constitutes a slow burn. Their first kiss is at the 40% mark and they are embroiled in a messy situationship that does get physical, except it's not nonstop smut. I would describe it as emotional spice with lots of tension, angst and misunderstandings. The misunderstandings got to be childish and I wish they had listened to each other more, but they're understandable given Mallory's severe anxiety.

At first Mallory thinks she's ace before she met Stef, but she has a lot of trauma around physical intimacy and I thought Stef was very patient with her, although at times the misunderstandings got to be annoying. (My least favorite trope.) Mallory's trepidation around sex was sensitively handled however. Sometimes it felt like Stef was desperate to be understood and Mallory was desperate to keep her in her life and that's not a particularly romantic dynamic to me.

But eventually they figured things out and it was charming how they complemented each other, respected each other and admired their career paths. I liked the idea that dreams can change. They became a lesbian power couple in the entertainment industry, a trope I also like if something of a stereotype.

Overall I found this to be a charming, sexy book and I loved Mallory and Stef as a couple. They were an exercise in bringing out the best in each other despite being from such different worlds.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Really good book! I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I loved the main characters their chemistry was off the charts and they worked so well together. This book really had a flow to it and was really easy to get into. I liked that each character had her own set of problems to overcome, but found away to help each other in the end. This was a really fun and enjoyable story. I would recommend this book and I look forward to what's coming next from this author.

Just finished "Hot Honey Love" by Nan Campbell, and wow, it’s a five-star feast for the senses! As chef Stef grapples with the fallout from her viral kitchen disaster, her journey to reclaim her passion through YouTube cooking videos with aspiring filmmaker turned wedding videographer is both hilarious and heartwarming. I loved how Campbell captures the tension between Stef’s culinary world and Mallory’s anxiety-driven reluctance. Campbell creates a rich tapestry of flavors and emotions & the chemistry between the two MCs is electric. Both Stef and Mallory's growth throughout the story is beautifully rendered.

If you adored Nan's previous works, or this is your first venture into her writing, you’re in for a treat—this one’s a delicious blend of humor, romance, and self-discovery that you won't want to miss! Thank you Nan for sharing this ARC and NetGalley for delivering it.

After crashing and burning on a TV cooking show, Stef needs to rehab her image. A friend suggests YouTube cooking segments, but to do it she needs a filmmaker.

Mallory Radowski is extremely reluctant to help out, even when a classmate asks her. And she's dealing with anxiety, which complicates matters. But she makes the video, it does well... and now Stef wants her to do it again!

Stef being really, REALLY pushy with Mallory over eating her food comes across pretty badly. Just saying. For all she knew Mallory could have a food allergy and sampling could have knocked her over dead.

Very very mid, honestly. Not bad but didn't really pull me in.

2.5 stars out of 5. Rounding up to three.

Nan Campbell strikes again with this amazing push and pull romance. I loved the interaction, slight slowburn, low angst love story.
One MC has a heart of gold and feels everything deeply that I want to wrap up and protect her.
The other MC is anxiety driven and closed off because of her extreme anxiety disorder. Watching her take charge over some instances of her anxiety was heartfelt moments. Campbell handles the at times debilitating anxiety well. She does not minimize the impact that anxiety can take over your life.
I enjoyed the secondary characters. They were well done.
I see this as a more pause and continue romance than an angsty romance as their was no major breakup or fight to reconnect with, which is a refreshing change.
I will look forward to more books in the future by Nan Campbell and will continue to follow her.

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out soon. This just wasn't for me. I couldn't get passed the main character not respecting the other main characters boundaries more and more, simply because she was upset that they didn't share the same passion for food, and it felt like it got framed that the pressure was a good thing. Pressure doesn't help arfid or any other eating disorder. Communication does.

I really loved this book! I didn’t want it to end. It was super light hearted while at the same time dealing with some pretty heavy subject matter. I was hooked from the moment I saw the title!

Mallory and Stef fit together like puzzle pieces. Where a slot was missing from one the other had the perfect shape to fill in the gap. It was like they completed each other even they couldn’t have been more different. Mallory needed Stef’s outgoing nature to force her out of her comfort zone and give her the courage to try new things reach for new opportunities. Stef needed Mallory’s composure and level-headedness to help her organize her jumbled thoughts turn her ideas into reality.

I really loved the portrayal of anxiety in this book. Mallory’s struggle with the bees in her head giving her trouble was so relatable and I liked that it didn’t change overnight. By the end of the book it wasn’t like she’d been magically cured of her anxiety just because she fell in love.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who wants a lighthearted, opposites attract romance. I really enjoyed this read and I’m definitely going to be listening to the audiobook in the near future. Thanks so much to Nan Campbell, Bold Strokes Books, and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Books with chefs, bakers, foodies, are always appreciated and they tend to deliver for me like the meals/desserts that are highlighted. Here, Stef is a chef, a person who feels so deeply, emotions pour from her at will. To be honest, I worried about her from the start when it felt like I was seeing someone who wore their feelings not only on their sleeve, but stapled to their forehead, in neon. Then there were moments I wondered how her passionate-in-all-feelings-all-the-time character was going to interact with our other MC Mallory. Mallory, a quieter and more reserved person, has anxiety, manifested through several behaviors that don’t lend themselves to being friendly or close to Stef. I found the portrayal of that character very well done. I especially appreciated her dealing with anxeity as very authentic. As someone who also suffers from anxiety, it was also very relatable. While there were moments in the story that felt like they were “hitting too close to home” it was also moving to see how Mallory not only managed it, but moved along with it in a way that was satisfying while also being realistic. Something that was also such a great relief was seeing anxiety portrayed as something that must be managed as opposed to “cured.” The journey our MC’s took to their HEA was robust and thoughtful, and I appreciate that it wasn’t too bumpy (heightened angst = heightened anxiety right?) Between the food and their HEA, definitely satisfying.

Chef Stef’s passion for her profession is being severely tested. After a disastrous appearance on a cooking competition show, she has become a meme. The entire Internet now knows her as the Kitchen Bawler. Her ascent through the fine dining kitchens of New York City has been thoroughly derailed, but she has a plan to get her career back on track. She’ll make cooking videos on YouTube to foil the algorithm and overhaul her search engine results. One problem: she knows nothing about creating video content.

Enter Mallory Radowski. She’s a talented filmmaker currently earning a living as a wedding videographer, with complicated reasons of her own for her reluctance to help Stef. Mallory lives with anxiety, and is the pickiest eater imaginable. Food—Stef’s love language—is untranslatable to her. How can she make Stef’s food look delicious if she won’t eat any of it?

This was a hit for me. I loved both Stef and Mallory. I totally relate to Mallory, and major props to the author for excellent mental health representation with anxiety. Utterly brilliant. I love how both women have their own things going on, and I really enjoyed the chemistry between them. I highly recommend this if you enjoy sapphic romances!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced digital reader's copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review!

Stef es una chef que participó en un programa de competencia culinaria, pero las cosas no salieron como esperaba y terminó convirtiéndose en el blanco de las burlas y ahora es un meme. Dos años después, sigue arrastrando las secuelas de ese fracaso, lo que le impide conseguir buenos trabajos. Entonces decide reinventarse y crear contenido para YouTube, y es ahí cuando alguien le recomienda a Mallory, una talentosa cineasta.

El libro resulta entretenido, aunque hay mucha falta de comunicación entre Stef y Mallory, lo que genera varios conflictos entre ellas.


Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so sweet! Low angst, high on personal improvement, yummy food, and a fresh take on grumpy/sunshine. I really enjoyed both MC’s. Mallory was such an interesting character. I’m no expert on anxiety but it seemed like Nan Campbell did her research. I wasn’t sure if Mal’s bursts of bravado and the leap she made towards the end were realistic- but maybe? Stef was so endearing. I loved how big hearted she was and how she knew what was important to her. The book kept me turning the pages- I was interested in the characters’ stories but I’d say more so as individuals than a couple, at the end of the day, though there was romance and steam. Shining through it all is the author’s charming writing style.

Also, I LOVED the bonus recipe at the end. What a treat, I’ll definitely be trying it!

Thanks to Nan Campbell, Netgalley and Bold Strokes Books. ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

4.5⭐️I have already read about characters suffering from anxiety, but Mallory is very unique, she has general anxiety disorder and Campbell stayed true to the character until the end and I really applaude her for it. Stef is THE goldenretriever girlfriend type and an the type that wears all her emotions on her sleeve. These two could not be more different. I admit I wondered why Stef liked Mallory at first, but then I was totally sold. Mallory has a system to control her anxiety and it includes food, so when they start having feelings for each other and Stef can't express her love language the way she usually does, its a real chinese puzzle. So the building of their relationship was unique and took the time needed. Let me tell you I was so touched of how patient, loving and understanding Stef is.

This is a a different take on an opposites attract trope, featuring Stef (a talented chef whose love languages are food and touch) and Mallory (a closed off, self-described anxious, picky eater).

I think that Mallory and Stef are really unique, both having their own individual quirks and struggles. It was far fetched with Mallory's issues would go on tv and etc.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a low drama, low stress but highly emotionally driven read. I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.