Fluffy, light as a well-made biscuit and goofy to the max, Bake it ‘Til You Make It is a baking competition romance in which two rivals go head-to-head to prove they have the moistest…cupcakes in all the world. It’s a fun book especially if you’re in the mood for something insubstantial, love Chopped, or simply wish your favorite Cupcake Wars contestants would get it on already. Our heroine’s goofy-clumsy-cutesy routine, however, caused me to mark this one down a bit.

Baker Taylor Madden loves the whimsical, the fanciful, and the silly. She dreams of owning her own bakery, where style and substance would collide and draw in customers, but is financially washed. Her chance arrives in the form of a spot on the TV Show America’s Next Great Bakers, and she leaps at the opportunity – as much as she can with her clumsiness.

She instantly becomes a rival to chef Alexander “Alex” Harrington, who’s only on the show to shut his dad up. Taylor soon stumbles into his pathway in more ways than one. The contest forces them to share a house with the other contestants, leaving them free during the weeks to do whatever they want.

Both Taylor and Alexander advance through the competition, and along the way their feelings grow stronger. But can they make it through the contest with their blooming love story intact?

Bake It Til You Make It is an easy read – the reading version of a walk in the park. It’s fluffy, it’s got solid food porn, and it’s got a good sense of humor to it. There’s just one problem, our heroine.

We have a classic grumpy/sunshine setup, and tragically that means our heroine has as many brain cells as a lamprey sometimes. This is supposed to make her ditzy and adorkable, but it does not. I didn’t want to side with Alexander when it came to her because he could be downright mean, especially in the beginning. 

Alex is more interesting because he has many more layers. He worries about becoming like his arrogant chef father; he doesn’t want to be in this competition at all. His family’s elite background makes him a target, and he’s very aware of how fortunate he’s been. He’s something beyond the facile, kind-but-what-else-is-under-that-hood situation Taylor has going on. 

The relationship is the typical love/hatefest, playing out in a series of small moments that both beguile you and make you sigh. Taylor is just incompetent enough to make you want to strangle her and just competent enough to make you see her genius, but I only got flickers of what attracted Alex to her in the first place.

The baking competition itself is extremely well-handled, with fun eliminations and dessert ideas. The genuine suspense there made me rank this higher than I might have, and the cake combinations sounded genuinely delicious. 

I did have a problem with the ending, though. The grand gesture didn’t quite work for me.

Yet the competition itself kept me going, and I did like Alex’s conflict well enough. The heroine isn’t perfect and there were some faulty plot points, but Bake It ’Til You Make It has just enough going for it to land a low-grade B.

Lisa Fernandes has been reviewing romance novels ever since her great aunt left a Billie Douglas book out in the bathroom. She’s currently working on a biography about Julian Sands.