Paris Daillencourt Is About To Crumble

Paris is a new graduate who has absolutely no direction in life, despite his talents and qualifications. So when his roommate enters him into the Bake Expectations contest, Paris is sure he won’t be accepted—until he is and now has to be on television in front of the whole nation. Paris’s photograph should be in the dictionary next to the entry for “anxiety,” but he doesn’t recognize this as the cause of his troubles. When he meets the cool and confident (and extremely attractive) Tariq during filming, his nerves become all-consuming. The second entry in Hall’s “Winner Bakes All” series (after Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake) is beautiful, nerve-wracking, and endearing. The focus for most of the book is on Paris’s undiagnosed anxiety and panic disorders, with the whole story expertly written from his perspective and with the romance often taking a backseat—though there is still plenty of romance. The characters are all thoroughly explored and fleshed out as individuals instead of archetypes, which gives this novel great depth.