Burn the Menu

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The rivalry was foreplay. The kitchen was the bedroom. And the forty feet between them was shrinking every day.

Harper Mason didn’t come home to fall in love. She came home to save her father’s failing diner — a thirty-year-old restaurant hemorrhaging money, held together by duct tape and denial. With a stroke-recovering dad, catastrophic debt, and a five-year plan she abandoned overnight, Harper has exactly zero bandwidth for complications.

Then there’s the complication across the street.

Rae Hwang built Nightshade Coffee from the wreckage of a devastating breakup. Her café is sleek, buzzing, everything Harper’s diner isn’t — and it’s stealing Harper’s customers one lavender latte at a time. Rae is charming, creative, and radiates the kind of confidence that makes rooms rearrange themselves around her. She’s also hiding behind a performance so polished that no one sees the wound underneath: the voice of an ex who told her she was too much.

When the town’s festival chair forces them to co-run the annual Breakfast Crawl, Harper and Rae go from rivals to reluctant partners to something far more dangerous. Late-night recipe testing in kitchens too small for two people who can’t stop brushing against each other. A storm that kills the power and ignites something that’s been building for weeks. A first kiss that isn’t gentle — it’s a month of tension snapping like a cable under too much load.

But Rae is dimming herself to fit — catching her laugh, delaying her texts, making herself smaller because the last person she loved told her the full version was exhausting. And Harper won’t say the three words that could drown out every voice in Rae’s head, because saying them makes it real, and real things can be lost.

With a town full of affectionate spies, a podcast that won’t stop broadcasting their chemistry, and a festival that will prove whether what they’ve built can hold — Harper and Rae have to decide: keep performing safe, manageable versions of themselves, or burn the menu and build something real.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ Rivals-to-lovers with real professional stakes
✅ Forced proximity in kitchens too small for two people
✅ Grumpy/sunshine with a control freak and a charmer
✅ Explicit, emotionally loaded heat (8 on-page scenes)
✅ A small town that ships it before they do
✅ Found family with a stubborn dad in a Nightshade t-shirt
✅ Food as love language — every chapter smells like maple and cardamom
✅ No Big Misunderstanding breakup — just real women confronting real fears
✅ An HEA that tastes like the best brunch you’ve ever had