Mixing It Up by Tracie Banister Book Review

Mixing It Up By Tracie Banister Book Review

The lowdown from Goodreads

Published October 15, 2016

Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Manhattan upper-cruster Cecily Sinclair now uses that pricey utensil to dish up fancy French fare on her cooking show, Serving Romance. When there’s an executive shake-up at the network, she’s not worried. Not much anyway. Her show’s a hit after all. Why would the new CEO want to mess with success?

The driving force behind several buzzed-about networks, Devlin Hayes is considered to be a wunderkind in the television industry. Although his plans to rebrand CuisineTV and make Serving Romance more Millennial-friendly don’t thrill Cecily, her charming, blue-eyed boss is a hard man to say “no” to and she really wants to keep her job—even if that means sharing screen time with a loathsome blast from her past.

Mercurial Italian chef Dante Marchetti a.k.a. “Il Duce” was once Cecily’s boss, and she has the PTSD to prove it. Now the owner of one of the hottest restaurants in town, Dante’s egomania knows no bounds and his constant attempts to provoke and upstage Cecily make her want to conk him on the head with a sauté pan. She thinks they’re toxic together, but viewers love their chemistry and clamor for more.

As Cecily battles to maintain the integrity of her show, she finds herself scheming and manipulating right along with Dante and Devlin. Is she fighting a lost cause? Does she really belong on TV, or would her culinary talent be better served elsewhere? And could one of the men who makes Cecily’s blood boil ignite a passion in her for something other than food?

Mixing It Up By Tracie Banister Book Review

Mixing It Up by Tracie Banister is such a fun read!  It combines two of my favorite genres – romance and cooking!  I seriously love foodie movies and books, and when you throw a love interest in there I just can’t quit!

The Basics

Cecily loves her life.  She has a great job, great apartment and wonderful friends.  Even though she is recently separated from her fiance, she doesn’t let that get in the way of her fun.  Cecily is an Upper East Side Manhattan native who has her own cooking show, ‘Serving Romance’.  She uses her classically trained French talents to serve up romantic meals to her viewers.  One shakeup at work shakes Cecily’s perfectly manicured life to the core.

Enter Devlin Hayes

When the network decides to make a change and a new CEO comes in, everything changes for her.  Devlin just doesn’t see things her way and they can’t stop butting heads.  To make matters worse, she is being forced to work with her former boss, the Italian chef Dante Marchetti.  Cecily cannot stand Marchetti and he can’t stop getting under her skin.  Viewers cannot get enough of their dueling personalities – how will Cecily get rid of him??  Will she have to leave her own show?  And which two of these men does she have REAL chemistry with?

THE VERDICT

Mixing It Up by Tracie Banister is a light, easy read that is well written with good character development.  It was a great change of pace from my usual dark, mysterious and serious reading fare.  I had a great time reading it and it would be a perfect beach read.  I was Really Into This book and I hope you are too!

Special thanks to Tracie Banister for providing our copy in exchange for an honest & fair review.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: TRACIE BANISTER

An avid reader and writer, Tracie Banister has been scribbling stories since she was a child, most of them featuring feisty heroines with complicated love lives like her favorite fictional protagonist Scarlett O’Hara. Her work was first seen on the stage of her elementary school, where her 4th grade class performed an original holiday play she penned. (Like all good divas-in-the-making, she also starred in and tried to direct the production.)

Mixing It Up By Tracie Banister Book Review