Antonia Bernardin

My 48th book of the year was A Pho Love Story by Loan Le, a cute little YA romance set against competing Vietnamese family restaurants.

A brief summary

Bao and Linh’s families have always hated each other, having owned Vietnamese restaurants opposite each other in Little Saigon for a lot of both of their lives. They even go to school together but have never spoken, until they end up being coerced by Linh’s forceful best-friend into working together on the school papers reviewing restaurants. Linh is an artist whose parents want her to go into a stable STEM career and Bao’s parents just want him to have a little direction and drive. As they grow closer together, they begin to investigate into why their families have been feuding for so long, discovering that it runs deeper than their competing businesses to the time before they came to America as refugees. Linh’s lies to her parents about her art and Bao eventually catch up to her and everything comes to the surface.

My thoughts

This book is so rich, not just with the cultural aspects but the love of food, the characters are so well developed and the journey they go on is so good. The end made me tear up and it was genuinely such a heart warming story, full of family and tradition. Be warned though you will be perpetually hungry whilst reading this!