I really loved the concept of this rivals-to-lovers story, and there was a lot of potential here, but it ultimately fell short for me because of how immature, petty, and cringey the FMC was. Her hate for the MMC stems from her belief that he's judgemental and thinks he's better than everyone, but she has all of those same traits and behaves even worse than he does. Ultimately she just felt very unrelatable to me and was the most unlikeable character in her own story. All of the sassy girlboss moments we're supposed to be rooting for her fell flat because they just felt extremely immature and disproportionate response.

Best Served Hot is a new romance novel following two food critics, Julie - who is an up and coming food blogger capturing the more adventurous side of food reviews with her small businesses, diners, and exotic palette in comparison to Bennett, the "society boy" who (little known to him) snagged her dream job.

I think this book does a good job of building up the interest between the characters, I believed the tension between the two and the undeniable build up of feelings. However, I do feel at times that Julie's character was *too* focused on the Bennett being rich thing. This character holds a grudge like no other for something that wasn't really in her or his control in the first place.

The inevitable conflict between our two characters during their romance was a bit predictable. I'm getting slightly tired of the trope where people storm out of the relationship before even finding out the other person's side/hearing the other person out. (There is of course a time and place for that, but this time and place didn't feel as appropriate).


Overall, if you enjoy high stakes/comedy/romance and food - I think you'd enjoy this book!

This was just such a cute foodie romance book. I absolutely adore Amanda Elliots writing style, and love how she incorporates mouth watering food and recipes into her stories. I loved her first book, and I absolutely adored her second book. She just has a way of writing characters who I love individually but even more together. Overall, I absolutely adored this book and it definitely made me wish I could eat the food described.

despite some of my favorite trips, enemies to lovers, food based stories, this just didn't do it for me.

I think this is a me problem... I'm kind of tired of books with a food type setting. Once I started reading that immediately just made me lose interest. I am sure if someone hasn't read as many rom coms set around food they would like this. There wasn't anything WRONG with the book, just didnt feel fresh to me.

What a fun foodie romance! I found myself getting hungry with the restaurant scenes!

The main characters are essentially rivals, one being a food critic for a newspaper and the other being a social media food reviewer, wanting to break into the professional food critic scene. I loved the idea of both spheres coming together to boost each others’ work. While the steam was great, but the plot had my attention just as much. That’s rare for me to say with romance novels, where I’m mainly there for the relationship, but this was just an overall fun, light read.

I never realized how much I like foodie romance books until I read Best Served Hot. Honestly, I think I liked the food descriptions just as much as the romance. I also really liked how the author tackled the sort of rivalry between traditional food critics and social media food critics. The romance was good and I really was rooting for Julie and Bennett. My only complaint is that I didn't feel the heat between them as much as I had hoped. First time reading the author but certainly not the last.

Read this one for the recipes, foodies!! Everything about this one sounds DELISH.

Elliott bites off a lot of deeper themes and topics in this one: sexism, classism, and developing characters you can feel connected to and understand. Some of the characters (Julie) were unlikeable in my opinion, but overall I appreciate what the book was trying to do, and that doesn’t necessarily bother me.

Julie and Bennett fell for one another in a predictable but cute way, and their conflict was understandable.

If you like foodie romances, you’ll love. For me, it was alright, but I’m sure I’ll read whatever Amanda Elliott pubs next!

This was so cute! It is true to its description: a foodie romance that will make you both hungry and happy.

This was a fun romance that I read as part of a group chat. A quick read and I really enjoyed all the food references!

I loved this book! overall 5 stars

Love all the descriptions of food, the characters, the chemistry between Bennett and Julie, the friendship with Alice, the working relationship with Emerson Leigh, and the collab to friendship with Jada.

Would love to see a story based on Emerson Leigh or Alice!

I loved Amanda Elliot's first book. but the second was not as great for me. Julie, the main character, is difficult to like and relate to in many ways. I loved the food aspects of this story and I am always a fan of the enemies to lovers trope, but Julie just irked me a bit!

Thank you so much to Berkley and Netgalley for an arc of Best Served Hot by Amanda Elliot.

I really enjoyed this one! First off, I absolutely looooved the descriptions of food. It definitely made me hungry and want to go out to a restaurant! If you haven’t read Sadie on a Plate yet I highly recommend it!

I also really liked Julie and Bennett. I found the burn to be a little bit too slow for me, and the miscommunication was a bit much, but I enjoyed these characters and was rooting for them. Though I did love the descriptions about food, I wish more time was spent on the development of the relationships, after all, we are here for the romance!

I do love Elliot’s writing and looking forward to reading more from them in the future !

This book made me so incredibly hungry but it’s a fun one! Two food critics take very different approaches and have very different opinions, but we have learned by now opposites attract!
Also, I found it amusing that these food critics could not cook!
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What really fascinated me after reading the author’s note is that she wrote this during the pandemic when you couldn’t go to restaurants because they were shut down. You can tell that this is a love letter to all things food. Of course, it’s not just food related. Julie and Bennett have a fantastic enemies to love relationship and I really enjoyed the side characters, especially Emerson Leigh. This was just a fun one and if you are a foodie check this one out!
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Huge thank you to @berkleypub @berittalksbooks @thephdivabooks @dg_reads and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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If you’re a foodie you’d love it and if your not you’d enjoy this delightful entertaining book about two food critics working together and reviewing restaurants together. Julie runs a good blog and Bennett is the new food critic for city’s largest newspaper which is the job that Julie applied for.


This one was right up my alley. Loved the banter, romance, steam and I especially loved that Sadie made an appearance.

This is a cute romance following a food influencer heroine and a food critic hero. This book is sure to make you laugh and also make you hungry! I loved that alongside the relationship between Julie and Bennett, you also read about Julie's relationship with her best friend, Alice. Best Served Hot also tackles important topics like privilege and sexism. I would say that some aspects of this book were over exaggerated to the point that I found a little irksome, but if anything, the author gets her points across well.

I would recommend this to anyone looking for a cute romance that:
- also features descriptions of delicious food
-isn't afraid to delve into important topics
-is filled with great female friendships

Julie works as an executive assistant by day, but at night she is a social media influencer, specializing in reviewing local NYC restaurants. She dreams of turning this hobby into a real career, but when she has a chance to apply for the New York Scroll, she does not get the job. To make it worse, the job goes to society boy Bennett who happens to hate social media. She confronts Bennett at a food festival, and posts the conversation on her social media page. Next thing she knows, the post has gone viral and Julie and Bennett are partnering up to generate more attention for their reviews. But there’s a fine line between competition and attraction and they are about to find that out.

There was so much to love about this book. First of all, I can’t talk about this book without sharing how hungry it made me. I wanted ALL the food mentioned. The food descriptions were incredible and definitely had me wanting to try these meals. I also loved Julie’s journey and how she chased her passions, stood up for herself, and took some pretty big risks in her professional life. But the real reason we are all here is the romance. The banter and chemistry between Bennett and Julie was top-notch. I also thought the author did a great job discussing issues of class and privilege without making it too heavy. Between this and Sadie on a Plate (which I also loved), Amanda Elliot has quickly become an auto-buy author for me and I look forward to whatever she writes next!

Thanks to Berkley Publishing for the advance copy and to @berittalksbooks and @dg_reads for the buddy read!

If you haven’t read Sadie on a Plate yet, I highly recommend you go pick that up right now! I really enjoyed it and was looking forward to Best Served Hot. Unfortunately, this one didn’t work for me. Reasons (with spoilers) below.

First - what I liked:
- the restaurant and food descriptions. Even reading with a full stomach it made me want to eat.
- the attempts to cover some deeper topics

What I didn’t:
- I didn’t really ever get the romance which is what I was here for. It was SO much description of the food that the romance felt very secondary. It was also sloooooow burn. And when they finally got together at 80% in - I found myself wishing it had been closed door. I usually prefer open but did not enjoy the sex scene at all. It just had me cringing.
- a third act breakup around miscommunication and someone running away instead of having one conversation is one of my LEAST favorite things. And then the “explanation” of how she misunderstood felt super lame to me - he retyped the reasons he didn’t believe in that someone else suggested and printed it out so he could think about it?? No.
- everything Emerson Lee - from her locking them in the printer room to her suddenly recognizing her privilege and getting Julie back her job. No.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

This is not a book to eat when hungry! I truly wish I could I could read Julie and Bennett's reviews in real life and visit all the tasty restaurants they go to. "Best Served Hot" is a really fun read with a charming protagonist and a great love interest. I loved the evolution of Julie's character through the story as she becomes more confident in herself and her capabilities while also broadening her sense of the others around her. The dynamic between Julie and Bennett was also really great and I was really rooting for them to finally get together. Overall, it was a really enjoyable read and I definitely recommend to those looking for a cute romance.

I started this one off thinking I would be really into a story about a NYC foodie instagrammer butting heads with a privileged establishment restaurant critic, but unfortunately it ended up falling flat for me. Julie is a PA to a retired NBC-esque exec by day, and runs her Instagram page, JulieZeeEatsNYC by night. After an altercation with the new restaurant critic at The Scroll newspaper, Bennett at a food truck festival, the newspaper decides to have the two team up and do joint reviews to increase their social media presence. They visit several restaurants together, but have almost zero chemistry with each other, despite eventually getting together. There was an attempt at enemies to lovers, but they didn't stay enemies for long, and a miscommunication subplot that was also resolved fairly quickly. The best part of this story for me was all of the food descriptions and it made me want to venture into the city to try similar restaurants. As far as a romance story though, it didn't quite do it for me.