3.75 STARS

A lovely, easy, charming read - just what I needed after the last emotional gut-wrencher.

I loved Toby's passion and fire, even though it was to the detriment of Evan's braid! ;) And, really, how can one not love a book where the MCs wear utilikilts! ( )

What a fun story! The main character's antics had me laughing out loud in places. The overall tension of the plot, will Toby succeed or will he fall flat on his face yet again, kept me glued to the pages. The villain was wonderfully evil and just waiting to get his come-uppance. All this and a setting in a restaurant with lots of wonderful food descriptions - and I just "had to" like this book.

I loved Toby - he was just waiting for disaster to strike, while not willing to give up the fight. At the end of his rope, he ends up with the equally desperate Evan, whose partner almost ruined him by pulling out of their joint restaurant. Toby has the ideas and the drive to make it big time, while Evan is the steady force in the background.

It takes them a while to figure out their relationship and the roles they play within the professional part. Toby makes a few mistakes - but thankfully learns fast enough to keep Evan with him. It was great fun watching them figure everything out.

( )

Fun. The guys were nicely complementary, and the twist at the end was enjoyable, if not very surprising. ( )

Toby Andrews is a nice guy and a great cook. Unfortunately, when he arrives at Evan Blankenship's failing Le Potiron restaurant, he's out of options. A series of mishaps at his last job has pretty much ended his career as a chef in fine dining in New York. The darling of haute cuisine, Tad Christopher is out to make sure Toby "never works in this town again!"Meanwhile, Evan's restaurant is failing and he knows it. He's sleeping in the basement because of the disaster created by his former business partner Dominic Giguere. When Toby offers Evan a way out of his current problems and a future for his restaurant, the heat in the kitchen goes up a notch.Maxfield's Stirring Up Trouble is a fun read! The characters are engaging and the sexual tension between Evan and Toby is hot to say the least. As Toby comes up with one crazy idea after another to make Le Potiron a success, Evan does his best to stay out of the line of fire behind his kitchen wall. What's Evan going to do when the wall comes down? Watching these two work out their personal and professional relationships kept me reading late into the night. Stirring Up Trouble is worth 4 stars and I've already started reading the sequel, All Stirred Up! ( )

There is a thing to be said, writing a good comedy it’s probably more difficult than writing any other genre; comedy has a perfect balance, it’s not too much to be comic, it’s not too few to be simply fiction. With Stirring Up Trouble Z.A. Maxfield has given us a perfect example of classy comedy.

The setting is perfect, some of the best comedies in movies and books wind up behind the stove, and a man in a kitchen, or it’s tragically comic, or it’s classy comedy. And when the man is wearing a utilikilt, well, again, it’s only through a perfect balance that you manage to obtain a perfect cooked story.

Toby is really a good guy but he is also a little bubble of energy that is difficult to limit under someone else instructions. When he is fired for the nth time, his sister sends him towards his last resort, a little diner that has more chances to close than to take off. The owner, Evan, is not exactly the perfect host, basically since he likes very few and very selected people, and that is not a good attitude if you want to launch a restaurant. But as soon as they meet, Toby and Evan click off together like two pieces of the same mechanism and it doesn’t take long before they are a couple not only in the kitchen but also in the bedroom.

Even if this is a very romantic story, with two young men who plenty enjoy their time together, and who like to kiss and cuddle (yes, this is that type of romance, tender hearts out there seek this out, you will not regret it), I really liked that it also felt real, for stupid little things but still; like Evan’s bad habit to smoke, or Toby’s impetuosity and yes, also a bit of egocentrism that makes him always think he is right, from the small detail like Ethan’s hair, to the most important ones like redesigning Evan’s restaurant, both of them of course without asking Ethan’s opinion. They are all these details that made both men a little less perfect and for exactly this reason, a lot more appealing and nice.

I also liked how I think the author brought a little bit of herself into the story in the supporting collective character of the techy savvy moms who will help Toby and Ethan to realize their dream (or at least Toby’s dream, this is another point why I liked Ethan and Toby, they were able to understand that they are different men loving each other, and again, finding a balance they are able to work their relationship); this is I think not the first time Z.A. Maxfield creates a cameo role for herself into one of her novels, and even if it’s not a real role, there is nonetheless something that can link the fiction story with the real-life of this author. Sometime this can be tricky, but in Z.A. Maxfield’s case, it’s one of her characteristic that I like the best.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VTZVSI/?tag=elimyrevandra-20