This was a breezy, spicy, witchy romance that largely follows kitchen witch Dina. She runs a successful cafe in London, and one day Scott walks in, bringing with him what Dina views as a host of ill omens. While Scott has a number of chapters from his POV, Dina does seem to have more of them. They run into each other again on a train and soon discover that they are both part of a wedding party for their best friends Immy and Eric. The forced proximity of the wedding allows them to get to know each other and to some extent their families and to start developing feelings for each other.
The problem with developing feelings for each other is that Dina was hexed many years before by a previous partner. This has resulted in all of Dina’s potential love interests being injured in some way when they start to fall for Dina, so now Dina limits how much she dates. This is the central conflict of the relationship, with Dina torn between acting on her feelings for Scott and wanting to withdraw to protect him and her own feelings.
I enjoyed some of the food descriptions in this, especially the ways that Dina imbues food and beverages with magic, such as “The briouats—melt-in-your-mouth filo pastry filled with honey and almonds—were heavenly, even without the spell that made you feel like you’d been kissed on the forehead by a loved one.” I also appreciated the diversity. Dina is bisexual and appears to be bi-racial (her mother is from Morocco, her father from Wales). Scott was adopted by a lesbian couple when he was 10, and while his ethnicity isn’t given, there’s a reference to how people would ask him “Where are you from originally?” There are a lot of supportive family and friends in both Dina’s and Scott’s lives, and I always enjoy seeing family relationships portrayed lovingly. However, Dina does hide her bisexuality from her parents because she is worried about their reaction, which is why she doesn’t ask her mom—also a witch—for help getting rid of the hex, because the partner who did it was a woman. I feel like the loophole of why she didn’t tell her parents it was a man who hexed her wasn’t addressed, so I felt some frustration toward Dina for dealing with this huge stressor for so much of her life when she could ask for help.
Ultimately, this was a cute, cozy read that I’d recommend to fans of cozy or witchy romances. 3.5 stars rounded down.