I just listened to The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar and it was so much fun! If you love cooking shows like The Great British Bake Off or Masterchef (especially Masterchef Junior), then you'll probably enjoy this one. But if you hate puns, this isn't for you. The puns are bountiful and perfectly cheesy in The Dos and Donuts of Love.

Shireen is determined to win the first season of the Junior Irish Baking Show. Unfortunately, so is her ex-girlfriend Chris. Shireen has to find a way to work with Chris when they're paired for the first challenge, but she's also developing feelings for their fellow contestant Niamh.

Jaigirdar deftly acknowledges racism and fatphobia in this one. The author's note at the end showed how much care was given to these topics. The Dos and Donuts of Love features a fat Bangladeshi Irish main character and a Korean Irish love interest. This was so cute and heartwarming!

Sorry to everyone else but Adiba clearly wrote this book for me and only me.

I’m kidding obviously but when Adiba announced this book, promising puns and sweetness and sapphic relationships in a Great British Bake Off-esque setting, I was more than in: ‘The Dos and Donuts of Love’ was possibly my most anticipated novel of the year.

Shireen is reeling from her recent breakup. Heartbroken and without her best friend (who is in Bangladesh visiting family for the summer), there is really only one thing Shireen is looking forward to: the Junior Irish Baking Show! One little snag though: Shireen’s partner is her ex-girlfriend Chris. And there’s the other problem of another contestant, Niamh, catching Shireen’s eye…

I love how Adiba always writes from a place where her characters are unapologetically Bengali, sapphic and fat-positive. Shireen also deals with racism and microaggressions during her time on the baking competition. She also undergoes tremendous character growth over the course of the story, learning who has her back and who doesn’t and to also not center herself when her loved ones have problems too. Adiba has talent that is evident more and more with every book she writes. With books that grapple with such macro topics, she is able to write with nuance and insight while still having the most lighthearted, wholesome books that make me squeal in delight or exclaim in indignation (I took every slight against Shireen personally, okay?).

As a pun lover, this book was like catnip to me. The chapter titles had me chortling every single time. Adiba is so unexpectedly funny, I’m really quite obsessed with this book. I have half a mind to purchase it for every young adult I know and shove it in their hands, begging them to read it.

At this point, I’m picking up every single book Adiba writes with no hesitation. And y’all should too.

Special thanks to Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for sharing this advance copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

tw: mentions of racism and fatphobia, depictions of anxiety (specifically anxiety and panic attacks and spiraling thoughts), and online harassment

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if you love baking shows, puns, sapphic/enemies to lovers romances, you NEED to read this book! it follows shireen malik as she competes in the first junior irish baking competition to win money to save her parents’ doughnut shop. little does she know, her ex-girlfriend has also been accepted to compete in the show.

the book was truly 🍵-ming with puns, and it felt like i was reading a better, literary version of the great british baking show.

it also tackled many important feelings and issues, centered around what it was like for shireen to compete in this competition as a young bangladeshi irish woman facing racist and fatphobic comments online. despite this, i loved that the book still felt light and fun and romantic. the characters were well developed, interesting, and relatable—and i LOVED the names adiba came up with for the judges 😅

i highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone, especially if you’re looking for a lighthearted, sweet (pun-intended) coming of age romance full of laughs.

this was a fun book, and as always with YA, the teens are a little extra, but I enjoyed it. The storyline was pretty predictable and i'd love to more stories about other chracters and want to know how things go with the donut shop

DNF @20%. I really wanted to love this book. A cute lesbian romance focused around a baking competition is right up my alley. But I found the main character, Shireen, to be insufferable to the point I had to put it down.

loved this romance and her trying to find love and finding herself. loved the friends and and the romance. I would read this author again. I really enjoyed the pacing and how the story and the character worked things out.

I've loved everything by Adiba Jaigirdar thus far, and The Dos and Donuts of Love is no exception. A very fun sapphic coming-of-age about girls in a cooking competition dealing with both exes and the suckiness of the internet. I loved all the characters and the plot was a great time as well.

I really really enjoyed this!! This book manages to be both adorable while also tackling the real issues of racism and fatphobia, especially within reality TV. I absolutely loved the baking competition show component of this novel--it felt so well-paced and like we got a great amount of the show without it being overbearing on the plot. Shireen is such a lovable character and I loved the sapphic love triangle going on here. The writing was so compulsively readable; I listened to the audiobook all in one day because I just had to know what happened next! The cherry on top of it all was each chapter title was a baking pun! Overall this was such a fun and cute YA contemporary--I definitely recommend it!

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this title through Netgalley.

Shireen may be recovering from a recent breakup, but there's only one thing she's truly focusing on: winning the Junior Irish Baking Show. However, when she enters the competition and realizes that her ex is part of the competition and there's a new friend on the scene with potential to be more, causing her to make a decision: focus on winning the show to help her family or be distracted by potential romance?

There's so much I could say about this book, but in the interest of spoilers, I'll be brief: Shireen is a wonderfully flawed protagonist and a role model for teens on how to be confident and chase after your dreams even when dealing with racist, xenophobic, and fatphobic people. Jaigirdar does an excellent job with providing evidence of this throughout the book while still allowing Shireen to triumph.

I've always been a sucker for cute queer baking romances, and there are never enough. The Dos and Donuts of Love, though? This one will satisfy that hunger (pun very much intended) and leave you hoping that Adiba Jaigirda makes an entire series of baking romances. If you're a fan of GBBO, baking, warm and fuzzy moments, and queer romances, look no further: this is your book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fair warning: do not read this book in an empty stomach. The food described within sounds much too delicious!

This was such a fun book! The characters were wonderful, the food sounded delicious, and the chapter titles all had dessert puns! I’m a huge sucker for a good pun, so that just absolutely tickled me. As did the names/descriptions of the judges on the Junior Irish Baking Show: spoofs of Mary Berry, Gordon Ramsey, and Paul Hollywood. Just such a fun touch that all fans of baking shows should appreciate.

The plot itself was simple, but well executed, much like a good doughnut. I can’t wait for this author’s next book, because all of the ones I’ve read so far have been lovely.

I have always loved Jaigirdar's books! I assign the Henna Wars in my young adult and MG literature college course. However, I may switch to this book. The writing is a bit more sophisticated and I enjoy the bits of humor sprinkled throughout. A solid read!

I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to say about this book. I really thought it was cute but I also thought she was naiive. I didn’t like that she was ready to believe everyone instead of going with her gut. I think it would have kept her out of a lot of trouble. But anyways……. Other than that I really liked it.

So first things first, the best thing about this is the puns. I don’t care what anyone says, the best name for a bakery ever is You Drive Me Glazy. The rest of the book is also filled with those puns and I loved them all. I don’t usually like puns, but when they’re baking ones, and in a book this cute, I’ll allow it lol The rest of the writing style was good too. I couldn’t stop listening to it. I was up till like 2 both nights trying to finish this. It was definitely worth the late nights. I did feel like the pacing was off tho. Like it was really slow and then the big thing happened and then it was over. I think it should have had some bigger events. At the very least like let her win something.

The romance was super cute. I’m not a huge fan of second chance romance, but since they were also now rivals to lovers, I knew I had to get my hands on it. And sure enough it was super cute. I loved it so much. I was a little annoyed that she was being that way just to make room for someone else that was terrible. As usual tho, I did wish there was more of them together, but LOL what can you do. IDK authors heard us say don’t do insta-love, so they just said ok and didn’t give us any romance until the very end. I just need a healthy balance.

The food in this one was also cute. I remember wanting donuts immediately after. So basically remember to have a snack on hand when you’re reading this too because otherwise you will be SOL. And you don’t want to be like me. I had no donuts and had to make due with a different kind of sweet. It was a crazing I just needed at the time.

The characters were the reason I wasn’t exactly sold on this tho. I just wasn’t into the way Shireen was. She was like a real Mean Girl. She might have just been acting out because she was just mad, but yeah no she was just mean.

This was another book that was actually more deep than the cover and the plot let on about it. The people who were watching the show weren’t exactly nice. They did like all people on social media and left hateful comments. I hated reading that, but it was accurate. That’s how keyboard warriors do. There was also some instances where the hate was front row and center and I REALLY hated she had to go through that. I was literally yelling at everyone in the book. Including Shireen.

This book is so cute and I really hope y’all read and like it as much as I do. It’s so much more than just a cutesy rom com! I enjoyed this immensely

“There are twenty-five people that I have to beat if I want to win this competition. Twenty-five people who are probably just as good at baking as me…. Everyone here is in it to win it. Just like me.”

Shireen Malik has always loved baking—and donuts. It makes sense because her parents own and run the donut shop You Drive Me Glazy, and Shireen has been working there since she was a little girl. So when she’s accepted to compete on the new Junior Irish Baking Show, she absolutely cannot wait. Never mind the fact that she’s still a mess from her recent break-up with her ex-girlfriend Chris who also happens to be a contestant on the show. And she’s definitely not going to worry about her fast friendship and budding romance with Niamh, another contestant. But when things start heating up inside and outside the kitchen, Shireen will have to figure out who and what is most important to her if she wants to come out, like a cherry, on top.

If you know me, you know that I really love reading books that include reality TV shows—and I also really love donuts. So when I saw Adiba Jaigirdar’s new book that has BOTH of these elements in it, I knew I had to give it a go. And let me tell you, THE DOS AND DONUTS OF LOVE is freaking fantastic! I enjoyed how Jaigirdar twists parts of the reality TV trope so you truly have no idea what will happen next. The characters are so much fun and the sapphic love triangle is stupendous; I really didn’t know who to root for! Plus, the book is full of so many *chef’s kiss* puns that even the most pun-averse person will crack a smile. Suffice it to say that THE DOS AND DONUTS OF LOVE truly is a sweet read, so grab a copy today!

Content Warnings: Fatphobia, anxiety, strong language, panic attacks, racism, mentioned homophobia, online harassment

(Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)

The absolute OBSESSION I used to have with competition baking shows is unreal - so obviously I HAD to read this one! This was such a cute story and the competition served as more than just a background story, which I loved! This may be my new comfort read!

3.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Feiwel and Friends for an eARC of this book, all opinions are my own.

Shireen Malik, a fat, queer, Bangladeshi-Irish girl with a passion for baking, dreams of saving her parents' donut shop by winning a brand-new Irish teen baking competition. But her ex, a distant best friend, a potential new romance with one of her competitors, and racist comments from viewers threaten to ruin her dream.

This book was sweet (no pun intended), but it didn't blow me away. That isn't to say this book is bad, it just didn't captivate me the way I thought it would. I thought Shireen's friendship with Fatima and relationship with her parents were the strongest elements of this book, and I honestly think the two "will they, won't they" romances could've been dialed back. I of course love seeing confident queer Desi girls, but I felt that it muddled the story. By the end of the book, I didn't feel like any of the messages this book set out to conquer came across in a meaningful way. For a book about a baking reality TV show, I feel like the baking show didn't feature a ton in the narrative. Of course, Shireen participates in it, but there was no tension in the scenes, and the baking process was skipped over completely. I wish this book about a baking show just had more baking show in it.

TWs from the author: mentions of racism and fatphobia, depictions of anxiety (specifically anxiety attacks, panic attacks, and spiraling thoughts), and online harassment

This is exactly the baking competition YA I've been waiting for! It's such a cute, mostly lighthearted read, and I loved how big a part the competition played - we got to see everything unfold, which was really fun to read. The book also has an adorable second-chance romance, which I'm a sucker for, so all in all it was a win for me, and definitely a comfort read worth revisiting.

I adored this book! It was one of my pride reads this year and I'm so excited to be able to share this book with my readers. I am always looking for body positive sapphic recs, and let me tell you. This is it! It was really clever and perfectly sentimental. I mean, I am here for a diverse sapphic romance with some GBBS goodness along the way.
Now I want a donut.

- THE DOS AND DONUTS OF LOVE is a joy. It's a pun-filled queer rom-com that still touches on important issues.
- Shireen's parents are not the "typical" immigrant parents often portrayed in coming of age stories, and I love that we are getting a different narrative here.
- I won't spoil anything, but I'm a big fan of how the romantic element of this story played out. Again, it's a bit atypical for a YA novel, and it's great. I continue to be a huge Jaigirdar fan!

Are you super into the baking competition trope this year? Let’s talk about a new book addition:
Jr Bakers - Shireen has been accepted as a participant in the Jr Irish Baking Competition
Ex- An Unfortunately so has her Ex
Rivals - who is the daughter of her families rivals, with similar donut shops
Team Up - and of course, their first round forces them to team up to stay in the competition. Grab your pastries and let’s dig in!

First, this author is one of my new favs since I discovered her last year. She definitely speaks to my geeky side. For example, the donut shop is You Drive Me Glazy. The judges in the competition are also a fun homage to Mary Berry, Gordon Ramsey, and I think Padma Lakshmi, with sounds alike names. It was fun and cute, and definitely another one to add to the baking show category this year!

Every time I read a reality TV baking show novel I ask "why do I keep doing this to myself??" because they stress me out so bad! This one, though, was surprisingly light on the stress. Reasons why: Shireen makes an early decision to stay off social media and ignore the hate; the show itself is not wrecking her life; even when things are really difficult, she has support from her parents and best friend. Some other things that kept the overall book pretty light include the absence of homophobia. Shireen does mention that not everyone in the Bangladeshi community is supportive, but those in her immediate circles and family are. Shireen and Chris do deal with racism and xenophobia being the only contestants of color on the show, and this is a pervasive theme in the book. There is romance drama, show drama, and even a bit of friend drama, some of which gives Shireen anxiety and causes panic attacks. There's also an intentional lack of fatphobia, which the author talks about more in the afterword.

A couple other things I appreciated about the book is that Shireen doesn't get so absorbed in the show/relationships that she forgets about her best friend or about helping her parents. There are lessons to be learned along the way, and I think it all comes together in a way that feels very realistic. The descriptions of the food had me so hungry, and got me baking right alongside Shireen! Overall, this is a fresh and engrossing story full of heart, big dreams, and sweets!