Title: Midsummer’s mayhem.
Author: Rajani LeRocca.
Format: e-ARC.
Publisher: Yellow jacket.
Page count: 332.
Release day: June 4th 2019.
Genre: Middle Grade, Retelling, Fantasy.
Rating: 3.5 stars.
*Thanks to Edelweiss for providing this arc!*
What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)
Eleven-year-old Mimi dreams of winning a baking competition judged by her celebrity chef idol. But she loses her best helper when her food writer father returns from a business trip mysteriously unable to distinguish between delicious and disgusting. Mimi follows strangely familiar music into the woods behind her house, meets a golden-eyed boy, and bakes with him using ingredients they’ve found in the forest. Then everyone around her suddenly starts acting loopy. Squabbling sisters, rhyming waitresses, and culinary saboteurs mix up a recipe for mayhem in this Indian-American mashup of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and competitive baking.
My thoughts:
This book immediately starts off great! Immediately things start happening, and I kept wanting to continue to read. And figure out what was happening!
I actually do not have so much to say about this book. I really liked the writing, a bit easy but then it is middle grade, so can not blame anyone for that haha. The ‘world’ was interesting, the characters were fun. I love that all the siblings were so supportive, even though they were fighting sometimes, which makes it quite realistic.
Also I really like the Indian influences in this book!
My only ‘complaints’ are that she is so good in baking that it felt a bit unrealistic? They were also left alone in the kitchen while using big knives etc. I’m pretty sure this does not happen to most 11-year olds. This took me a bit out of the story. The other one is that I think sometimes terms were used that were a bit to hard? I don’t think many children know what saffron is, I know I didn’t when I was that age? They also talked about some spices from India, which was really interesting, but they were all unfamiliar to me!
Also I loved that they included some recipes at the end of the book!