I liked the trope and even found it genuinely funny (I like a good old funny spice book) at times. Was it a bit dragged out in my opinion? Definitely — but honestly, it wasn’t that bad. What bothered me more was that there were too many characters who felt irrelevant throughout most of the story, only to suddenly all appear at the end. At that point, I struggled to keep track of who was who and why they mattered.