Review: Recipe for Chaos by Jaxon Knight

Recipe for Chaos (Fairyland Romances #3)
by Jaxon Knight

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: MM

Blurb:
The recipe is simple:
Charlie cooks an amazing meal
Charlie impresses heir to the theme park Max Jones
Charlie gets a promotion and a dash of control over his kitchen

But the perfect recipe becomes unpalatable with one wrong ingredient and Max Jones is not behaving how Charlie expected…

Max is meant to inherit the entire Fairyland theme park but he just wants to party, have fun and bed as many people as possible. That is, until he meets Charlie and falls for him so hard he can’t even finish the delicious meal.

Charlie doesn’t have time for clubs or helicopter flights over the city, but Max is accustomed to getting what he wants, and he wants Charlie.

Featuring one part Billionaire, one part sensible chef, six cups of attraction, a generous dose of snark and a freshly prepared Happy Ever After.

—

Recipe for Chaos is a sweet MM gay Billionaire contemporary romance

My Review

I am really enjoying this Fairyland Romance series so far and I was excited to dive into this third book in the series, even more so as I knew Charlie would be one of the main characters. I liked Charlie’s character in previous books and it was great to see him be a main character now. His love interest is someone we haven’t met before, Max. Max is the heir to the Fairyland park.

At first I wasn’t quite sure how this romance was going to play out, Max is a spoiled rich kid basically and he acts like it. He’s used to getting what he wants and he decides he wants Charlie and does everything he can to make that happen. Charlie on the other hand is pretty down to earth, he loves his work and he likes cooking and where the hopes to further his ambitions and designs some new recipes for the kitchen, he now has to deal with a billionaire who wants him.

Charlie was easy to like from the start. I liked how much he enjoyed cooking and it was fun to read about the recipes he tried out, he also has a good work ethic, he takes his work serious and seems to enjoy it as well. I also liked reading about him and his best friend Nikki. I also like how he handled Max and said no when he didn’t want something. he could give off conflicting signals to Max at times, but luckily he figures that out eventually.

Max though was a bit much, a bit spoiled and a bit too used to getting what he wanted. I wasn’t sure what to think of him and didn’t like how he acted at first, but I slowly began to warm up to him and realize it did make sense why he acted this way. With his mom caring more about the park than her family and him being rich meaning he never had to work for anything. And now he has, he has to work to win Charlie’s heart and he’s slowly gettign more involved in the day to day operations at Fairyland. I really liked seeing that change in him and him slowly realizing that having fun all day wasn’t as fun as he thought and him getting into the work for Fairyland. he has some great character development over the course of the book. But I also liked how he doesn’t completely change and some of his earlier behavior stays and it’s just so typical max and I found that behavior a lot more endearing by the end when the rest of his behavior had changed a bit.

Just like how I wasn’t sure about Max at first, I also wasn’t sure about the romance. There was a clear mutual attraction at first. It even had a bit of insta love as Max falls for Charlie quickly, and while I agree with Cahrlie that it was too fast, it also fit Max somehow. Like it made sense for him to act this way and I liked how he learned form his mistakes and realize he should take it slow at times. I also liked how he knew what he wanted and never wavered in that conviction.

Their romance starts out a bit bumpy, Charlie is attracted to Max, but doesn’t like some of Max’s behavior. Max showers Charlie with gifts and big gestures, but doesn’t stop to think what Charlie wants. And Charlie just sits back and let Max do all the work, until at the end when he realizes it doesn’t work that way. I loved how both characters had to work to make this work. Both had to step out of their comfort zone and step a bit toward what the other wanted, even though it might not be fully for them. And I loved seeing how they wanted to step out of their comfort zone just to make the other happy. By the end I was sold on their romance. I just wish we could’ve seen them together and have fun a bit more as most of their scenes now have some sort of conflict. I hope we’ll see more of them in future books.

On that topic, I do really like how we still see the previous characters around. It varies from book to book who we see and how much of them. Nate plays a bigger role in this one as he’s one of Charlie’s best friends, but Dash also makes an appearance. And I also was surprised to see Cody and Dean make an appearance. There’s a great scene where Charlie gets some unexpected advice from Dean. I also like Lennon, who is a recurring side character in each book so far. And Liam was quite the interesting character too and I liked how he is there for Max when he needs it most.

I liked how in each book the park Fairyland comes even more alive. In this book we get to see a behind the scenes look in the kitchen and a bit of what is involved in planning and managing the park. There are also ideas for changing up the park and ofcourse we see more of the already familiar parts too. It’s such a fun setting to spend some time in and I really like the theme park setting.

There were a few plot lines that were left a bit open, but those might still get resolved in future books or maybe meant to be open. Like how Max and his mother’s relationship progresses and how she deals with Max and Charlie being together. And what will become of the twins, will Max stay friends with them and can they understand this new direction he took?

To summarize: This was another great read in this series. I liked Charlie in previous books and was excited for his story. It took me a while to warm up to Max, he was a tad unlikable at first with his spoiled rich kid behavior, but he grows and changes a lot during the book and it did feel realistic and made sense how he acted. Max and Charlie’s romance has quite some things they have to work out. I liked how they both had to work and adjust and change to make things work and sometimes step out of their comfort zone for the other. It really was clear how much they cared about the other. There are some great side characters, some new and some recurring ones from previous books. I liked seeing the main characters from previous books again. It also was fun to see a bit more of the Fairyland park, the theme park makes for such a fun setting and I like learning more about it. I am looking forward to the next book!

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon

You can also read my review on Goodreads, Bookbub and Amazon.

Have you read a book set at a theme park? Do you like visiting theme parks?