A Pho Love Story is filled with love, food, and family feuds

A Pho Love Story by Loan Le is like Romeo and Juliet if the Montagues and the Capulets are two competing families who own Vietnamese restaurants. Luckily, there is no double suicide and the teens actually talk to their parents and work through their problems! Who wants a tragedy when you can have a fun teen romance?

Characters

Bảo and Linh are delightful. Linh is an artist but feels like she has to hide her love of painting and art because her parents want her to go into a more stable career (engineering). She doesn’t want to lose her connection to her parents so she, for the most part, goes along with their plans. She still paints but she doesn’t let them know how passionate she is about it. How she has time for school and art when she works full-time at the restaurant, I have no idea.

Although, when she talks to Bảo for the first time, she is in a bit of a panic. The restaurant is having a Pho Day and it’s packed. She takes a break in the alley and when Bảo comes to check on her, something begins that neither of them could’ve expected.

Bảo is a writer but doesn’t know it quite yet. Bảo is by no means an overachiever in school, he’s not popular. He’s just Bảo. He works on the school newspaper with Linh’s best friend, Ali, although, he has very little interest in it. That changes when Ali has him edit a piece for the paper and the writing spark hits.

But that’s not the only new spark in his life. He nervous when he crosses the street to the alleyway where Linh is sitting, but she seems to be upset. He can’t just leave her there. It turns out to be a catalyst for everything that happens after.

A Pho Love Story perfectly mixes together food, family, and romance

The dynamic between these two is perfection. Not every romance gets the chemistry right between the two main characters, but Le writes it masterfully. I could read about Bảo and Linh just hanging out together all day.

Supporting characters

There are two supporting characters that I absolutely loved in A Pho Love Story: Ali and Chef Lê. Ali is such a supportive friend to Linh and turns into a great friend to Bảo as well. I love how she pushes them a little bit but is also there to support them (especially Linh) no matter what. There’s a scene when Linh stands in front of Ali’s classroom crying and when Ali sees her, she immediately leaves class to comfort her friend. Love to see it!

Chef Lê is so damn fun. He runs the first restaurant Bảo and Linh go to for their project, but he quickly becomes one of their biggest supporters. He loves Bảo’s writing and hires Linh to paint a column in his restaurant. He also jokes with them about their relationship and is a bright light in this story.

Plot

Once Bảo and Linh meet again (they knew each other as little kids) in the alley, they think they’ll never see each other again. Sure, they’ll catch a glimpse of each other since their families’ restaurants are across the street, but they won’t interact. Luckily, they could not be more wrong.

When Ali sees Bảo’s talent for writing, she decides to partner him up with Linh for an idea she has. They will go to restaurants around town and Bảo will write a review and Linh will paint a picture of the restaurant. This is a version of the group project romance trope that I love so much!

But there is one problem with this idea: Bảo and Linh are supposed to never talk to each other and loathe each other for all eternity. Since their families hate each other, by association, they should as well. So, if they work on this project together, they have to keep it a secret. We all know how this is going to end. Yikes!

Through their trips to different restaurants, they get to know one another, and pretty quickly, they see that they have a connection they can’t help but want to explore. And they do. They meet in secret, go on a date, and find as much time as they can to be together.

Besides getting to know each other and sharing as many kisses as possible, they also try to figure out why their parents hate each other. They know it has to be more than just competing restaurants. What they find out…it’s huge. #nospoilers

But that’s not the only revelation. Linh’s parents confront her when she comes back from her first real date with Bảo and everything kind of implodes from there. Neither of their parents like that they hid their relationship, but Linh’s parents are much more upset that she lied to them about her love of art and her relationship with Bảo. It’s a very intense scene.

It takes some courage from both families and Bảo and Linh for them to all come together and begin to heal from things that happened in the past.

Structure

A Pho Love Story is written from multiple points of view. Each chapter is either written in Bảo or Linh’s point of view. I love when authors do this, especially for romance, but it doesn’t always work. It’s done perfectly here! It also made it seem like these two families are intertwined together even before we figure out the secret that’s keeping them apart. It’s really well done.

Food

There is so much food spread throughout this book. It might as well be another character. It’s at the restaurants, it’s in Bảo and Linh’s homes, it’s there almost every time they see each other, and it’s part of who they are. Everything is described so even if you’re not familiar with something, you’ll know the elements of it. Just…don’t read this book hungry!

I also LOVED how much this book connected food and family. It seems to be an almost universal thing in our world. We come together around food. But that’s even more apparent in A Pho Love Story. Bảo and Linh’s thoughts about their parents are tied to food and the restaurant. Food is so apart of their lives, it’s impossible to not talk about it when talking about these characters and this story.

Overall

Overall, A Pho Love Story is such a cute romance, but with some serious and intensely emotional scenes. Le balances the happy and the sad moments so well. If you’re looking for a young adult romance with plenty of Vietnamese food and family, you need to check this out.

A Pho Love Story by Loan Le is out now in hardcover, ebook, and audiobooks formats