From Goodreads: There’s one thing Maddie finds more tempting than red velvet cake: her coworker, Drew. All it takes is one of his sly winks or a playful hip-check by the cooler, and she’s incinerating the cookies. Her boyfriend would not approve.

When a reality TV crew descends upon the bakery, her simple summer job gets even more complicated. Maddie could become the Bakery Network’s next breakout star, if she can handle the heat of being cast as a show villain. Drew has an alternate idea: run away from everything, with him and his sexy tousled hair. She decides to take the leap, but when she finds out Drew’s been hiding a shocking secret, Maddie looks down at her packed suitcase and takes a moment to think. Should she fly off to Australia with a guy she hardly knows, or should she pick up her suitcase and hit him with it?

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Moon has created a hilarious novel; she’s a wonderful storyteller, capturing the reader’s attention from the very beginning with her true to life characters and their amusing circumstances.  Practice Cake is about Maddie’s struggles—a coming of age story, if you will—in which she has to deal with a controlling boyfriend, a crazy job, her sister and her sister’s unfaithful boyfriend, and an unhelpful egotistical friend, all while taking part in a reality TV show that begins to consume her life.  I spent much of the novel scoffing as I read, especially as Maddie tells it like it is, without sugar coating anything.  She’s a fresh and intriguing main character and I really enjoyed her.

Drew is also a very interesting character.  He’s aloof and sexy, yet his secret is a bit overpowering and may change the readers perceptions of him upon completion of the novel.  At least, it did for me.  Moon does a wonderful job fleshing him out and making the reader interested, but also cautious of his presence, adding a bit of suspense as the plot unfolds.  And yet, while Drew is a constant presence throughout the novel, the giant leap the synopsis touches upon above, concerning Drew and Maddie’s escape to Australia, really isn’t expanded upon until the very end of the novel.  This causes the reader to continue to turn the pages in rapid succession as he/she desires to know the truth about Drew, and even though most of the focus of the novel is actually on Maddie as she attempts to survive her day-to-day life, Moon has set up her novel to quickly intrigue and captivate her readers.  Overall, I really enjoyed this novel.  Four stars. 

I received a copy of this novel from the author in exchange for an honest review.