Recipe for Trouble is Dylan Morrison’s second published contemporary romance, and it’s an absolutely delightful read. It’s an opposites-attract slow-burn romance between a grouchy video editor (Ben) and a ray-of-sunshine chef (Pete) who end up working together when Ben is roped in to editing a disastrous cookery video that ends up going viral. Like the author’s Fall Into You, which I reviewed a few months ago, Recipe for Trouble is told from a single perspective and there’s a lot of internal monologue – but the interiority feels more focused this time around, plus the romance is stronger, the chemistry between the leads is terrific, and the author’s dry, observational humour really hits the spot.

Ben Blumenthal works as a contractor for Formica Media on a video editing gig he hates. He loves editing videos – he’s good at it and enjoys the process of cutting things together to make them into a smoothly watchable whole – but editing technical and instructional videos is dull as ditchwater; it doesn’t challenge him, and sitting in mind-numbing meetings with colleagues he barely knows (and doesn’t like) about mind-numbing projects on topics he’s never cared about is soul destroying. It might pay the bills – but he feels himself dying inside a little more every day.

He’s on a break in the building’s coffee shop one afternoon when Rick, who works several floors up and stops to chat sometimes, approaches him to ask if he’ll do a few hours work on a project for him. The renowned foodie magazine Rick works for, Gastronome, wants to produce what the bigwigs are calling “accessible Gen Z content” – as in cooking videos using the magazine’s recipes – but their head test chef, who is otherwise extremely competent, turned out to be a total disaster once the cameras started rolling. Rick asks Ben to take a look at the footage and see if he can do anything with it and Ben, who has been a fan of Gastronome forever (he grew up working in his family’s restaurant and is a pretty good cook himself) agrees to see what he can do – it’ll be something different, at least.

When he sees the footage, however, he realises the situation is much, much worse than he’d thought. It’s worse than bad. It’s horrific. The chef, Pete Bailey, is around his own age, good-looking, more than a little bit hot and… a total idiot. Even though he is, presumably, talented enough to have landed one of the cushy, coveted positions at Gastronome, he “has produced what has to be the single worst collection of cooking footage ever created by man.”

After speaking to Rick again, Ben clues into what’s really going on. Pete has been pushed into doing the videos but doesn’t want to do them; Rick doesn’t want him to do them either – he doesn’t want to do them at all – and now Ben is part of their scheme to make the higher-ups think it’s a terrible idea. Furious at being used and fuming at the idea that Pete can so easily afford to throw away an opportunity like this – one Ben would have loved – a mad and slightly tipsy Ben gets down to work, and, after hours spent cutting, recording voice-over, adding captions and graphics, sends in his edit.

Life goes on as usual for the next week, until Friday afternoon when there’s an unexpected visitor to his cubicle on the twenty-seventh floor. A tall, handsome visitor who is even hotter in person than on the screen… and who doesn’t seem at all annoyed at being made to look like a bit of a jerk in the video. In fact, he loved it, and insists Ben has saved his bacon by making it look like he was so incompetent on purpose – which prompts Ben to blurt out that he’d thought Pete was faking it for the camera. Pete’s reaction to that is absolutely not the one Ben normally gets when he snaps at someone; usually they pull an annoyed face and get away from him (which is generally the desired outcome). But Pete cracks up like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

Ben’s problems really start, though, when the video drops the next day, and promptly goes viral. The execs are delighted and want to make a complete web series of nine episodes with Pete presenting and Ben… doing his thing and turning disaster into kitchen comedy gold. In the very first filming session, Ben realises that Pete’s on-screen incompetence is not only completely genuine, but that it’s because he has an almost pathological fear of being filmed – which makes him wonder why on earth Pete is putting himself through such purgatory and why the magazine doesn’t find someone else to do the show.

Needing to shoot, edit and deliver nine shows in a short time means Ben and Pete start spending a lot of time time together, although not all of that is spent in the test kitchen – sometimes they go out to eat together, or for drinks with the rest of the kitchen staff, which always somehow ends up with the two of them engaged in long conversations about everything and nothing. Ben knows developing a crush is just setting himself up for heartbreak because the guy is way out of his league, but Pete is kind and generous and fun, he never seems to forget anything Ben tells him about himself, he gets Ben’s obscure jokes, he just… gets Ben. By the time Ben realises what’s happening, it’s too late – he’s fallen head-over-heels.

I really liked both characters, and I especially enjoyed Ben’s dry humour and snarky narrative voice. He’s a bit of a social misfit who doesn’t have the patience (or inclination) to attempt to fit in with what everyone else deems socially acceptable – saying what you don’t mean and spending time with people you don’t like. He struggles with anxiety, he’s overly self-critical, and he’s cynical, often speaking before he thinks, which can make him seem mean, weird, or both, and which generally puts people off talking to him. (Fine by him.) The story is related entirely from Ben’s perspective so we’re in his head the whole time, and there is, as I’ve said, a lot of internal monologue here, but the author uses really well it to show us why Ben is the way he is and to help the reader empathise with a character who might otherwise be a bit difficult to like.

Pete, on the other hand, is a walking ball of sunshine – apart from when he’s in front of the camera. He’s very much the golden retriever to Ben’s black cat; he takes the whole Pete-is-terrible-on-camera mess incredibly well, he laughs, he jokes and he doesn’t get bent out of shape about it and seems like a totally carefree guy – although there are very small indications early on that Pete isn’t really okay and that there’s something more going on with him. Even though we don’t get into his head, we do get a good sense of who he is and of his growing feelings for Ben in the way he listens to him, looks out for him and puts his heart into cooking for him – while Ben is too blinded by his lack of self-esteem to realise that Pete is every bit as smitten as he is.

There’s a small but well-drawn secondary cast including Ben’s upstairs neighbour, Mrs. C., and some of Pete’s colleagues, and the writing is funny, vivid and engaging. The two leads are endearing, their slow-burn romance is very well done, and they experience real growth as the story progresses.

My main quibble with the book is that the backstory that drives much of the conflict feels rather flimsy, and the villain of the piece is a bit cartoonish. It’s clear from early on that Pete is essentially being forced into making the videos and that his camera-aversion is related to something in his past, but when all is revealed it’s a bit of an anti-climax. Still, by that time, I was so invested in Ben and Pete getting their HEA that I was prepared to suspend my disbelief a bit.

Recipe for Trouble is utterly charming – heartfelt, funny, wonderfully romantic, and hard to put down, and I enjoyed it a great deal. On to the Keeper shelf it goes.