Have you ever read a book and thought "This should have been a video game?" Because that thought sat in the back of my head the whole way through. The plot is fast-paced with a structure of narration (cutscenes), hunting for ingredients (map exploration), and then the culinary battle (boss fight). There's also dating sim elements, and plenty of one-on-one campfire chats with supporting cast that slowly reveal everyone's personal motives. Heck, there are even tidbits of world lore on the "loading screens" between chapters. And speaking of world building, there's a lot of fun stuff to mine in here. The author's bio talks about growing up in a diverse Asian neighborhood, and that's evident in the variety of food and names presented here (shout out to the calamansi mention). The competition is as brutal as promised, with Squid Game-esque levels of punishment for losers, and there are plenty of layers of backstory for all of the characters with a much larger world just beyond the doors of the competition. And that's where a video game structure might really have come in handy. There's too much to fit into one book that would be great for multiple playthroughs. On this route, Cai can date Bo. On this route, she skips romance entirely to learn more about Kama.