Review: Lavash At First Sight by Taleen Voskuni*

*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity.

Title: Lavash At First Sight
Author: Taleen Voskuni
Genre: LGBTQIA+ Romance

Trigger warnings:  Toxic Work Environment, Difficult Family Relationships

Rating: ★★

Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️ (Closed Door)  

Twenty-seven year old Nazeli ‘Ellie’ Gregorian likes the prestige of her tech marketing job but hates the condescending Patagonia-clad tech bros, her micromanaging boss, and, now, her ex-boyfriend. Who dumped her. At work.

So when Ellie's lovingly overbearing parents send her to attend a conference in Chicago, she's eager for the distraction. While she's there, she just has to help their company, Hagop's Fine Armenian Foods, win a huge award and get a free Superbowl ad. No big deal.

Within minutes at the conference, she meets witty, devil-may-care Vanya Simonian. The sparks fly as they get to know each other – both Armenian! From the Bay Area! Whose families are into food! But their meet-cute is cut short when Ellie’s parents recognize Vanya as the daughter of their greatest rivals – the Simonian family whose mission (according to Ellie's mother) is to whitewash and repackage Armenian food for the American health-food crowd.

Sworn as enemies, Ellie and Vanya must play to win the award by the week’s end – while keeping their feelings secret . . .

Lavash At First Sight is the latest romance novel from author Taleen Voskuni. After reading and loving her first novel Sorry, Bro last year (click here to read my review) I was highly anticipating the release of Lavash At First Sight but unfortunately it missed the mark for me.

To start by discussing the aspects of the story I did like, as with Sorry, Bro I enjoyed the bisexual rep and the exploration of both Ellie and Vanya’s parent’s attitudes to them being queer. It was also nice to see the celebration of Armenian culture that's briefly sprinkled throughout the story but I really wanted more of this as it was the thing which would really set this book apart from others.

Unfortunately, that is where my praise for the book ends. The plot primarily takes place over the course of a weekend but it was very slow paced and I felt like I was crawling through it by the end. Although the book is marketed as a romance novel it really actually lacked any proper romance plot. The plot was primarily just about Ellie attending a food packaging conference with her parents, taking part in a competition to win a free Superbowl ad and then gradually realising she wanted to leave her corporate job and join the family business. Any romantic aspect was quite flat and felt like an after-thought by the author. This was ultimately really disappointing as I loved the romance story in Sorry, Bro so had high hopes for this book too. I did also get quite tired of the conference setting very quickly. The competition element added a bit more excitement but it felt very repetitive in the end.

Ellie was a fundamentally unlikeable protagonist. She had no likeable qualities, little personality outside of her corporate job and very little character development over the course of the story. Vanya also felt like quite a two-dimensional character whose only discernible personality trait was being sexually attractive to our protagonist.

I didn’t find myself rooting for Ellie and Vanya at all, they really lacked chemistry and we didn’t get much relationship building. The fact that their relationship was forbidden due to their parents being enemies added a bit of an interesting element but it wasn’t enough to stop the romance feeling quite flat. This is a closed-door romance which meant that the author almost needed to work harder to write relationship building scenes which have us buy into the chemistry but this wasn’t achieved at all.

Unfortunately Lavash At First Sight was a disappointing read for me.