Five-Course Romance

Patricia Lim 1 story

Summary

Sophie Sinclair has always known exactly what she wants: to become a great chef—and to marry Julian Hayes. The first one is going according to plan. The second? Not so much. At twenty-two, Sophie is nearing the end of culinary school and has set her sights on training at Alder, one of Seoul’s most celebrated restaurants. There’s only one problem: Alder belongs to Julian Hayes—her older brother’s best friend, a two-Michelin-star chef, and the man she has been hopelessly in love with for years. Julian has never understood Sophie’s determination to turn the two of them into a love story. To him, she is his best friend’s little sister: loud, stubborn, endlessly unpredictable, and far too comfortable disrupting the carefully ordered world he has built around himself. But inside Alder’s kitchen, Sophie isn’t interested in being treated as anyone’s little sister. She wants to earn her place as a chef. Between demanding services, impossible standards, staff meals, culinary disasters, and late-night rides home, Sophie begins to discover that becoming the person she wants to be may require more than proving herself to Julian. And as the distance between dreams and reality slowly begins to change, both of them may find that love, much like a good meal, cannot always be rushed. Some things have to be served one course at a time.