By Gabrielle Kroeger

“Love From Scratch” by Kaitlyn Hill is a workplace, rivals-to-lovers’ romance. This is Hill’s debut novel about Reese Camden and Benny Beneventi who are two interns at a company called Friends of Flavor. Both Camden and Beneventi are working towards the fall internship at the company, but there is only one spot. When something comes up at the office, and the two of them need to film a video together, fans love them and it becomes a permanent feature on the company website. 

When Beneventi and Camden are first introduced to each other, Camden is sure she will hate Beneventi and will not want to continue working with him. However, the more they work together to film their segment for Friends of Flavor, the more she realizes he is a genuinely nice person. She does not want to become friends with Beneventi because she does not want anything getting in the way of her getting the fall internship. 

Beneventi is determined to get Camden to hang out with him outside of work and his attempts to get her attention are comical. He uses plenty of food puns and everything he does is amusing and charming. His character is loveable from the start. Camden eventually gives in, and their friendship soon blooms into something more. 

Hill included a lot of events throughout the book which made it very interesting and never boring. There are company cookouts, weekend trips, meet and greets, and more. At each of these events, Camden and Beneventi’s romance grows while they try to keep it from the rest of the company. 

Hill did an amazing job of representing issues women face in the workplace, especially in a workplace run by men. There are many instances in this novel where Hill shows a CEO or a higher up male acting inappropriately or rudely towards female employees. She also showed the backlash women tend to get online while men are loved in the comments. It was nice to read a book that showed this in an accurate way and also showed how men react in these situations. When Camden informs Beneventi of the issues women face in the workplace, he wants to learn how to help. However, when the women in the office wanted to do something about the inequality, the CEO asked about how it would affect the men. 

Most of the characters in this book were really enjoyable to read about. Beneventi especially was written really well and he definitely made the story and it would have been nice if we got to read his point of view, as well as Camden’s.

Camden, however, was a bit annoying at times. She went through something in her past that made her choose to stay off of social media, but then she got an internship that requires her to manage the company’s social media accounts. She made something that had happened four years prior to this story a much bigger deal than it seemed to be. She seemed to always be looking for ways to ruin her happiness. From the beginning, she was constantly questioning her relationship with Beneventi, so it always seemed like she was not really interested in him like he was her. If Hill had cut back a bit on the self sabotage, it would have made the story much more interesting.

That being said, this book is very entertaining and it is quite funny. The banter between Camden and Beneventi will leave you smiling throughout their segments. Reading about Friends of Flavor will leave you wishing it was a real show so you could watch these characters everyday.