Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee
A Novel
Title: Fake Dates and Mooncakes
Author: Sher Lee
Publisher: Underlined
Publication Year: 2023
ISBN: 9780593569955
Rating: 4.5 stars
Ok, I’m starting this review off with a warning: it does contain spoilers because I’m dying to talk about what happens at the end. However, what I spoil is an ending you can see coming practically from the first page, so it’s not like you wouldn’t see it coming if you decided to read the book. But, that’s your call, so stop here if you don’t want it spoiled.
Still here? Great! This book is a YA romance likely intended for high school-age readers. It opens with Dylan Tang, a seventeen year old boy working at Wok Warriors, his Aunt Jade’s Chinese takeout restaurant in Brooklyn. Dylan recently lost his mother, so he and his rescue Corgi, Clover, have moved in with Aunt Jade and his cousins Megan and Tim above the restaurant. Jade dreams of being able to expand Wok Warriors from a takeout-only place to an eat-in restaurant that specializes in Singaporean Chinese cuisine, but despite their delicious food, the restaurant is struggling to stay open.
Dylan’s dream is to enter the mooncake baking contest and save the restaurant. Before she passed away, Dylan’s mother had wanted to work with him to recreate her mother’s snowskin mooncakes. Winning this competition will allow Wok Warriors to be filmed for a food show and help the restaurant get the publicity it sorely needs. The cakes are made with a special palm sugar from Malaysia and pea flowers from his grandmother’s backyard, but since his grandmother lost her recipe book and his mom died, no one seems to know the recipe. He and Aunt Jade will have to recreate it from scratch.
Filling in for their delivery crew when the takeout is short staffed one night, Dylan meets Theo Somers. Theo is half-Chinese, half-white, wholly gorgeous and charming, and disgustingly rich. The problem is, Dylan was delivering to Adrian, Theo’s rude and entitled boyfriend. When Theo shows up at Wok Warriors the next day, Dylan is thrilled and even better—it turns out that Adrian isn’t Theo’s boyfriend, just a lifelong friend. After getting to know Dylan a little better, Theo sends a check for $5,000 (just the amount they need to avoid getting evicted) to Aunt Jade in the guise of a grant from the Revolc Foundation (that’s Clover spelled backwards if you missed it). Dylan traces the “grant” back to Theo and agrees to go to a wedding in the Hamptons with Theo to repay him for his generosity.
When they show up for the wedding and Dylan finds out that Theo wasn’t actually invited, he realizes he might be in over his head. It turns out that while the Somers family isn’t lacking in funds, there are complicated family dynamics and drama the likes of which Dylan has never seen. Dylan also has way more than caught feelings for Theo and at times, like during a gentle kiss on the dance floor, it seems like Theo has too, but in a fake dating scenario, it’s hard to figure out what is real and what is just pretend.
After the wedding, it does seem like it was all in Dylan’s mind. Theo said he’d be busy that next week, but all of Dylan’s calls and texts go unanswered. When Wok Warriors gets a delivery order for Theo’s house and specific instructions that Dylan be the one to deliver it, he is certain that he is finally going to see Theo again. However, when he arrives all he finds is Adrian…wearing Theo’s shirt. Dylan allows himself to be convinced that Theo and Adrian are together and that Theo was only using Dylan. Dylan is crushed.
When Aunt Jade invites Theo over for dinner, Dylan is shocked that he comes. After an angry outburst, they realize that they have both been texting and calling since the wedding but none of the communications are getting through because someone blocked Dylan’s number in Theo’s phone and changed the number on Dylan’s contact so the calls and texts are going elsewhere. It seems that this is all part of a misguided plot to keep Dylan and Theo apart to avoid the ire of Theo’s father. Theo promises to handle things with his father and the two of them happily begin to date.
But, things aren’t as handled with Theo’s father as Dylan thinks. Mr. Somers shows up at Wok Warriors convinced that Dylan is using his son to get publicity for the restaurant (Dylan and Theo’s kiss at the wedding made the tabloids and the Somers family is often in the news). He gives Dylan a check for $100,000, enough to pay the family debts, and threatens Dylan that if he doesn’t dump Theo, Mr. Somers will ruin the restaurant with bad publicity. Dylan is nothing if not honorable, so he breaks up with Theo to protect his family, but also returns the check because he isn’t one to be bribed.
The night before the mooncake competition, there is a huge storm. The restaurant is flooded and has thousands of dollars of damages and losses. Trying to clean up and get things back on track, Dylan almost misses the mooncake competition.
Wok Warriors needs this competition win now more than ever, but Dylan was never able to find the Malaysian sugar in the US, a big problem since the celebrity judge is Malaysian and that sugar and its specific taste would likely be a major point in Dylan’s favor. He is now running late for the competition, has had to replace all of his supplies at the last minute, and doesn’t have the help of Aunt Jade who had to stay back at the takeout. The odds seem stacked against him.
Just when he starts to lose hope, Theo shows up at the TV studio where the competition is taking place. He has flown to Dylan’s grandparent’s home in Singapore where he was able to get his grandmother’s jar of Malaysian sugar and cuttings from the pea flower plant she always used to make her mooncakes. He also helped Dylan make enough practice batches of the mooncakes that he can fill in for Aunt Jade as Dylan’s sous-chef.
As is fitting for a rom-com, Dylan wins the competition which means Aunt Jade’s restaurant will be featured on a TV show, he and Theo make up and they stand up to Theo’s father together. Theo’s father has a change of heart about their relationship and gives Dylan back his original check for $100,000 and his blessing, so Dylan can use the money to buy the new restaurant space before their TV debut. Everything ends happily ever after.
So, I liked the character of Dylan and I was really rooting for him. However, every other teen-chef in the mooncake competition also wanted to win and I think it was kind of unfair that Dylan was able to use the special supplies his rich boyfriend could afford to fly to Singapore and get at a moment’s notice. It doesn’t specifically say that those ingredients are what allowed Dylan to win, but that just felt kind of crappy to the other contestants who were bound by whatever ingredients they could get domestically. Also, the Somers family has a lot of connections and if Theo was willing to miss his own 18th birthday to get Dylan the sugar, who knows what else he would have been willing to do for him. While the romantic in me likes the grand gesture of flying across the world for a cup of sugar, the rule follower (and environmentalist) in me were really bugged by that.
Otherwise, I thought the story was really cute and very age-appropriate for a YA romance. Dylan and Theo’s relationship is kept very PG-13 or lower and while their hotel room at the wedding does fall into the “only one bed” trope, it is a king sized bed and the spiciest thing that happens in it is some light cuddling while watching TV (there is also weirdly a see-through shower in the middle of the room and it makes Dylan feel self-conscious but nothing very sexy happens in it). Throughout their relationship, there are several instances of making out, but it is mostly just references and none of those scenes are described in detail. I think that makes this a great rom-com for younger readers. It’s still romantic and fun but it’s definitely not too graphic for readers on the younger end of the spectrum.
This is probably me showing my age, but it’s never even discussed that Dylan and Theo are gay. I feel like so many YA romances with homosexual relationships feature angst about coming out or families who aren’t supportive, but sexuality wasn’t discussed or questioned in this book. Both Dylan and Theo are already out and neither of their families have a problem with it. None of the conflicts in this story have to do with the fact that they are a homosexual couple. They’re just a couple and have typical couple issues (well maybe not “typical”—none of my partners’ parents have offered me $100,000 to dump their kids—in fact, I’ve always done it for free…). While I think it is really important to be aware of the way anyone who isn’t cis-het is treated in our societies, I also think it’s great that we are seeing more and more books (especially in YA and middle grade) where people all across the gender and sexuality spectrums and all in kinds of relationships are being normalized without these identities creating the crises in the books. I hope I keep seeing more of this.
In addition to everything else going on in the book, Dylan and Theo both also have to come to terms with their desires for the future. They are both in their senior year of high school. Dylan has always wanted to follow in his mother’s footsteps and become a veterinarian, but working in the restaurant more has made him think he might want to be a chef instead. He still really loves animals—especially advocating for abused and neglected animals like Clover was before he adopted her—but is getting more passionate about cooking. However, to not be a vet like his mom feels to Dylan like some sort of betrayal to her memory. Similarly, Theo’s dad has always wanted him to be a lawyer. Theo has the grades, intelligence, and drive to go to law school and succeed, and that is his plan, but he has personally always been into art and music more. His dad said he would only pay Theo’s college tuition if he followed the law tract, so he has never seriously considered doing anything else, but law just doesn’t give him the spark that art and music have. The boys both encourage each other to follow their dreams. In Dylan’s case, Theo reminds him his mother would want him to be happy above all else and that he can be a chef and still be involved in animal welfare causes like organizing an adopt-a-thon for rescued animals on her birthday every year. Dylan encourages Theo to bring up his passions in his confrontation with his dad so that they can have a realistic discussion about what Theo wants to study in college and what his father is willing to pay for. Both boys are intending to follow their passions by the end of the book.
I loved the characters in this book and while a lot of it was very predictable, the journey was sweet and heartwarming enough to make it a fun one. This is a great rom-com for teen readers or people who like their romances on the more mild side.