I love romances and cooking shows, so when I read the synopsis of Love From Scratch I was intrigued! Today I’ll be talking about this book and have an author interview to share on my tour stop for this book being hosted by TBR and Beyond Tours. Keep on reading to find out more!

Love From Scratch by Kaitlyn Hill
Genre: Young Adult Romance
Publishing Date: April 5, 2022

This summer, Reese Camden is trading sweet tea and Southern hospitality for cold brew and crisp coastal air. She’s landed her dream marketing internship at Friends of Flavor, a wildly popular cooking channel in Seattle. The only problem? Benny Beneventi, the relentlessly charming, backwards-baseball-cap-wearing culinary intern–and her main competition for the fall job.

Reese’s plan to keep work a No Feelings Zone crumbles like a day-old muffin when she and Benny are thrown together for a video shoot that goes viral, making them the internet’s newest ship. Audiences are hungry for more, and their bosses at Friends of Flavor are happy to deliver. Soon Reese and Benny are in an all-out food war, churning homemade ice cream, twisting soft pretzels, breaking eggs in an omelet showdown–while hundreds of thousands of viewers watch.

Reese can’t deny the chemistry between her and Benny. But the more their rivalry heats up, the harder it is to keep love on the back burner…

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Author Interview

What inspired you to start writing?

                I’ve been making up stories in my head for as long as I can remember, taking my dolls on wild adventures when I was little, imagining alternate lives for myself when I was bored, and so on. But I never did much creative writing in school and didn’t even think of “writer” as a career option until I was nearing the end of college and got back into reading for fun after a few years of reading only for my studies. Something clicked in my mind, along the lines of, “wow, a normal person just made this up and wrote it down. Could I do that?” And that’s how I started to try it myself! To this day, I learn so much and am so inspired by reading good books for fun.

What are some of your favorite books that you always recommend? New releases or older books.

                The book I was reading when I had my “a-ha” moment that maybe I wanted to try writing stories too was The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. So much fun!! But in the past year alone, I’ve read so many amazing YA romances that I highly recommend—One True Loves by Elise Bryant, Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean, and Our Way Back to Always by Nina Moreno are a few that stand out. I also just finished Samantha Markum’s This May End Badly, which comes out April 12^th, and it’s one of my new favorite books ever.

What has been your favorite part of the publishing journey for Love from Scratch?

                It’s been incredible to start to see readers’ reactions to the book. The feeling of having complete strangers connect to and fall in love with these characters and their story that’s so personal to me has been like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’m so honored and grateful, especially when people tell me they relate to Reese’s challenges with sexism and finding her place as a woman in the world.

If you were a character in Love from Scratch, what type of character would you be?

                There is definitely a lot of me in the main character, Reese, but since I’m a few years older than her, I’d probably be more like one of her mentor figures, Katherine. She’s a chef at Friends of Flavor, the online cooking channel where Reese is an intern, and while she’s a little more badass and confident than I am, I think the way she tries to guide Reese to use her voice and advocate for herself is reminiscent of what I hope to inspire in younger readers of this book. I would also love to have her cooking abilities.

Seeing how food is a part of Love from Scratch I have to ask, what food could someone wake you up with in the middle of the night?

                Hands down, biscuits. My partner makes especially great biscuits, all fluffy and warm and perfect when they’re fresh out of the oven, and I put honey or strawberry jam on them. My favorite food!

What is your favorite quote from Love from Scratch?

My favorites are always the less eloquent lines where I just make myself laugh, like page one’s “I hope my nose breath is making him hot,” or later in the book, when Reese says about Benny in a flannel, “he still looks like Mr. July in a Hot Lumberjacks Calendar.”

Tour Schedule

During this tour there will be different posts done by other amazing bloggers and bookstagrammers. Click here for the full tour schedule.

About the Author

Kaitlyn Hill is a writer, reader, and sweet tea enthusiast who believes that all the world is not, in fact, a stage, but a romance novel waiting to happen. Her debut novel Love from Scratch comes out 4/5/22 from Delacorte Press/Penguin Random House.

Kaitlyn has a BA in Sociology/Anthropology and German Studies, which means that she can tell you way too much about the Communist Manifesto in Karl Marx’s mother tongue. Before landing on writing, she worked in roles from city government intern in a small German town to Haunted Mansion Maid at Walt Disney World, and most recently, at her hometown public library.

Aside from books, Kaitlyn’s favorite things are giraffes, ABBA, and excessively long naps. She lives with her real life romance hero in Lexington, Kentucky.

Author Links

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I’m definitely excited to sit down and read this book soon! Seeing how this book does involve food – what food could someone wake you up for in the middle of the night? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!