Cafe Con Lychee

By: Emery Lee

Narrated by: Avi Roque, Kurt Kanazawa

From the author of Meet Cute Diary comes a delectable rom-com that’s brimming with zest and a sprinkle of sweetness. A must-read for fans of Casey McQuiston and Julian Winters.

Theo Mori and Gabriel Moreno have always been at odds. Their parents own rival businesses—an Asian American café and a Puerto Rican bakery—and Gabi’s lack of coordination has cost their soccer team too many games to count.

Stuck in the closet and scared to pursue his own dreams, Gabi sees his family’s shop as his future. Stuck under the weight of his parents’ expectations, Theo’s best shot at leaving Vermont means first ensuring his parents’ livelihood is secure.

So when a new fusion café threatens both shops, Theo and Gabi realize an unfortunate truth—they can only achieve their goals by working together to cook up an underground snack operation and win back their customers. But can they put aside their differences long enough to save their parents’ shops, or will the new feelings between them boil over?

Sweetness

I consumed this story like a puff pastry. It's bite sized, sweet and leaves a lingering satisfying warmth.

Had to get used to Gabi’s voice

I almost returned the audio book just because I personally hated Gabi’s voice, idk if it’s because I’m a Spanish speaker, surrounded by many Spanish speakers, all of which have varying degrees of accents based off their different countries of origins and different degrees of accent strengths and etc- all of which I absolutely adore (this is even including other non Spanish languages like Portuguese and etc)

I might just not have liked the voice in general or the voice combined with the Spanish accent, but yeah idk. Just my personal opinion. I’m sure it might not bother others the way it bothers me but it might not have helped that it listened to Cemetery Boys (which happens to include a character with a Spanish accent somewhat similar to Gabi’s) and I preferred those takes on Spanish voices far more,)

food over the characters

have you ever went to a restaurant that looks and sounded cute, and went you got the meal you was excited to try the exciting of the fusion of the two cultures combined to make this meal. to being utterly disappointed and left a bad taste in your mouth. you keep trying hoping it would get better, but it didn't?
that's how this book was like for me. the premise sounded adorable and was excited that one of the main characters was Asian and the other was Latin. once I began this book, I kept hoping I would like the characters especially Theo, but I just could find the redeeming qualities of the characters. I wanted so much to like the characters, but I just couldn't find the qualities for me to root for them.
now the fusion foods sounded amazing and would hope one day to try

Mixed Feelings

Honestly, and I hate mentioning this kind of thing, because I'm sure he's a great guy, but the person reading Gabi made me want to quit the book several times. Like, a LOT. Every time it was his turn to read it was much less enjoyable to listen to. I don't know if he didn't practise ahead of time or what, but his cadence really feels like he's getting lost halfway through a sentence and is surprised by the ending of it. Every. Sentence. The guy that reads Theo is really good tho, and I did want to know what happened in the book, but yeah, I'd prefer not to listen to Gabi's reader ever again.

Thought it was good, but not amazing

It was pretty decent I suppose, but I never really got invested in the story or characters. Just seemed there was something missing