Anybody else tired of the Princess theme for little girls? For those of us who are, there is a saying in this book that I think should be made into a t-shirt: Suck it up, Princess. If made, it might very well wind up being the best selling “princess” product of all time. Our heroine would wear one of those shirts; this slogan is her new motto for dealing with life.

Frankie Bennett didn’t just have a hissy fit in public. She had it on national television, squaring off against her jerk of a cheating ex-husband on his TV show Mitch in the Kitchen. Six months and a divorce later she is at her Aunt Gail’s, an unwashed, underfed mess – who spends all day, every day in bed bemoaning her fate. One intervention later she finds herself giving up haute cuisine for chopping vegetables at a diner boasting “the world’s best meat loaf.” And the world’s hottest chef. Her boss Nikos is a Greek god come to live among mortals; a man guaranteed to waken the latent libido of even a hot mess like Frankie.

Nikos Antonakas got a good look at Frankie during the TV show meltdown, but he is unprepared for the impact she has in person. He is drawn to her from the moment they meet. He’s been happy running the family diner, living on money he made as a financial guru back in the day. Should he let love in and risk his hard earned peace? Can a man who has been unlucky in love take a chance on a woman whose break ups make the news?

Something the author did really well here was capture the pain and chaos of a divorce. We learn the ups and downs of rebuilding your life when you are still smarting from the destruction of the last one. Moments of this occurring, of Frankie coming back to life in terms of romance, of making new friends, are all shown in contrast against the pain of trusting her own judgment after her last bout of catastrophic failures. This is perhaps the area where the author shines the most – capturing the rawness of a person who has had a big life let down.

The shine sort of stops there, though. I didn’t really buy the romance. It was very much boy meets girl, so why not? I just didn’t get where and why they connected. Frankie’s friendship with her new BFF Jasmine felt much more real, based much more on a genuine kinship than her realtionship with Nikos. This portion of the story really needed filling out.

Speaking of filling out, the characterizations were uneven in this one. Both Frankie and Jasmine felt very well drawn and I got to know them throughout the novel. Nikos and Simon (Jasmine’s love interest) – not so much. The men just needed more to them to make them seem more fully realized.

Combine that with some rather predictable plotting moved forward by some rather unbelievable events (such as the assistant’s last minute change of heart) and you get a novel that doesn’t quite make the grade. Some great moments shine through, but they are not enough to save the overall work.