Jackie Oh is a Korean-American sophomore at Bronx Science, living in Queens, NYC, who loves French cooking, and who dreams of becoming a professional chef, and who works at her grandparent's midtown Manhattan Korean deli Melty's on saturday's Her strict workaholic corporate Korean parents have other things in mind for her. Their dream is that Jackie has the perfect GPAs, PSATs, and SATs and that Jackie follow in their footsteps into a prestigious Ivy League college. They don't understand her dream, and rather see that Jackie studies hard instead of working at the deli on saturday's.
Jackie has an important school exam on the day of the but secretly she goes to te open casting day for the tv cooking show Burn Off! , accompanied by ger grandmother and she gets in. When her parent's discover this they are furious. but after Jackie promised to get good grades and to study hard, she flies with her mother to Los Angeles for the show recording days. There she enters a very hard competition, and finds out that not every contestant in the show is into cooking as much as her. The judges are another problem; they expect her to cook typical Korean foods, not the French cuisine Jackie is specialized in, and she has to convince the judges to not judge her on being Korean, but on her cooking talents. But then her mom gets a call from home; Jackie's beloved grandfather is seriously injured in a racial attack against Asian people and is in the hospital.. and then Jacky finds out that family is more important than winning.
I loved Patricia Park's previous books and altough this new book is very different then the previous ones I truly liked it. It had a little less depth than the previous books, but the storyline was very entertaining with a nice cast of characters. I really liked Jackie's littlebit rebellious character and how she refused to be the ''model minority'' and went her own way, instead of what her parents expected of her. The cooking show parts was very realistic, I just could imagine it in tv and these parts where highly entertaining. The love for her grandparents plays an important part in the book, they where so sweet and it was so sad when Jackie's grandfather was the victim of an awfull anti-Asian hate attack, and it was also sad to read about her brother Justin, and because of shame and keeping up appearrances, he never was visited by his parents, but this changes in the story.
Overall a very good book, very original with a perfect mix of fun and more serious parts, which is why I recommend reading What's Eating, Jackie Oh? !
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