#lizzy dent

[bookstothrivecom]

Drive Me Crazy Summary, Book Review: A Sizzling F1 Romance of Rivals

Introduction To Drive Me Crazy Book Summary | Lizzy Dent Have you ever felt the electric buzz of a crowd just before the lights go out at a Grand Prix? That mix of gasoline, hot asphalt, and sheer, screaming potential? That’s the visceral energy Lizzy Dent captures in Drive Me Crazy. I was intrigued by the promise of a Formula 1 love story written with authentic grit. So many sports romances…

Drive Me Crazy Summary, Book Review: A Sizzling F1 Romance of Rivals

[kamreadsandrecs]

Title: Just One Taste

Author: Lizzy Dent

Genre/s: romance

Content/Trigger Warning/s: death of a parent

Summary (from publisher's website): Olive Stone is about to spend four weeks in Italy with the most beautiful man she’s ever hated.

When Olive Stone and her Italian pseudo-celebrity chef father fell out fourteen years ago, annoyingly handsome Leo Ricci slipped right in as his surrogate son and sous-chef. No one is more surprised than Olive when her father wills her his beloved (and now failing) restaurant. Or that his dying wish was for Olive and Leo to complete his cookbook…together.

She’s determined to sell the restaurant. Leo is determined to convince her not to. As they embark on four weeks in Italy, traveling from Sicily to Tuscany to Liguria, they’ll test each other as often as they test recipes. But the more time Olive and Leo spend together, the more undeniable their attraction grows. Olive finds herself wondering whether selling the restaurant might be running away, and what it might be like to try Just One Taste of Leo Ricci. Because he isn’t who she expected, and this trip might reveal more about who Olive is than she’s ready for.

Buy Here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/just-one-taste-lizzy-dent/26a8c41080728c53

Spoiler-Free Review: Okay, so. Mostly a charming, escapist read, with not a lot of thematic heft, but is entertaining enough.

I honestly don’t think there’s much to say about this book, except that it gets the job done. Which, I think, is my primary disappointment with it. I don’t always expect the books I read to have some kind of profound, earth-shattering thing to say, but I do want them to give me something to untangle, to give my brain something to chew on while it entertains me. And this book…does not give me even that. It’s kind of the equivalent of ultra-processed food: delicious, but nutritionally empty. Which is unfortunate because all the discussion of Italian food could have gone somewhere interesting, but it doesn’t go deeper than what the plot requires.

Overall, this is adequate for entertainment, but doesn’t offer much depth beyond surface entertainment, despite opportunities throughout the book to do so.

Rating: two and a half arancini

[sparklybookdragon]

Netgalley Arc Mini Reviews

Blurb:  On a remote island nestled off the coast of Sweden, four friends—Tilly, Anna, Linnea and Evelina—meet every year. Best friends since childhood, the idea is to drink beer, dance by the water, and shake off the weight of life’s expectations. The location of the island is a secret to everyone but them. One night of reckless fun and secret-sharing, and then they return to their normal…

Netgalley Arc Mini Reviews

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: The Setup by Lizzy Dent

I adored Lizzy Dent’s The Summer Job, which I laughed my way through last summer and I was very excited to dive into her latest release. I didn’t need to read a synopsis before picking it up. I just knew I’d be in for a good time!

When an eventful encounter with a fortune-teller brings Mara a handsome Austrian cellist, she becomes convinced that this man is her destiny. So she tells him that his destiny awaits in a pub in a small English seaside town on the last weekend of August. Thus a three month project is launched to turn Mara into the woman she has always wanted to be in preparation for the cellist’s arrival. Meanwhile, her workplace, a delapidated lido, is crying out to be rescued. Can Mara and her colleagues save it?

Mara’s workplace is a place that has had the soul sucked out of it but her colleagues are great fun to be around. A lot of readers will be able to relate to Mara’s despair at not being listened to while having plenty of ideas on how to improve things. She has been beaten down by capitalism and disappointment, which, let’s face it, who hasn’t?

Mara has a rather lovely flatmate called Ash, who I fell in love with at first sight. He is the epitome of cinnamon roll and it was clear that he would become a love interest. Mara is her true self around him and only him, so the romance element of the book was very predictable as soon as Ash turned up. However, I still loved watching their will-they-won’t-they play out, which continued until the very last page.

My main gripe with the book was Mara’s unwavering trust in astrology and fate. While it was quite a comic aspect of her character, I did wonder whether it was believable of a woman in her early thirties. It made her read quite a bit younger than she was and gave her a lot of naivety. She does learn from it by the end of the novel but I wasn’t sure it was particularly authentic for a adult woman to have so much confidence in the validity of what her horoscope said.

The Setup is a fun, light-hearted novel, featuring a heroine that has so much to learn and a very loveable cast of characters. I really wanted Mara to find happiness and I also wanted the lido to succeed, so these two things kept me reading. I don’t think it was as funny as The Summer Job but it certainly was an enjoyable, easy beach read about community and acceptance.

[shelf-love-club]

the summer job - review

birdy has made a mistake, and quite a big one at that. she's pretending to be her sommelier best friend at a restaurant that's depending on her for their relaunch. the thing is, she doesn't know anything about wine, so she's bound to mess this up and ruin her friend's reputation. and it doesn't end there. she's also falling for the nice chef, but he thinks she's someone else.

i thought the premise of this sounded fun: a girl that doesn't know anything about wine is pretending to be a sommelier and falling for a cute chef in the process. the execution of the story, however, wasn't as good as i had hoped. i found Birdy to be an insufferable main character, who needs quite a lot of maturing for a 31-year-old woman. the other characters weren't all that interesting either and i thought they were all quite one-dimensional.

the story in itself, despite the interesting premise, left a lot to be desired. it felt really unrealistic that no one would realise that a so-called sommelier doesn't know anything about wine and is constantly making mistakes. the only thing i liked about the story was the setting in the Scottish Highlands.

the writing was okay, and is probably the reason why I'm giving this book a (generous) two-star rating. it was funny at times, and i definitely laughed a few times, but that's basically it. other than that, there was literally nothing engaging about this book and i am actually surprised that i finished this. in my opinion, there are way better romances than this.

rating: 🌟🌟

[nreadsandetc]

And I think about myself. The aimless wanderer. The directionless woman who didn't know what she was missing until she found it. Family. Community. Love. Did I need any more? Or was it okay to just be?

Just be me?

I think, for a while, it's exactly what I need. For now, being Birdy will be my calling.

And then we'll see.

[nreadsandetc]

My brain is racing and I wonder why I can't just enjoy being kissed without analysing every moment of it

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: The Summer Job by Lizzy Dent

We’re getting to the time of year where I usually binge read a bunch of rom-coms and I am so grateful that this book came into my life when it did. I’d heard good things about it from my fellow bloggers but I still wasn’t expecting to have quite as fantastic a time as I did.

Birdy Finch's best friend Heather has recently run away to Italy to pursue an almost certainly doomed romance and Birdy has found herself at a loose end. So, she takes a job as a sommelier at a beautiful Scottish hotel. Only Birdy knows nothing about wine. It’s Heather who should have taken up this job but Birdy isn’t going to tell anyone that -not even Heather herself.

Birdy has never really had a clear idea of what she wants to do with her life and I know this is something that so many people of our generation can relate to. I think it’s often because we were lucky enough to have so many choices that we simply found it difficult to pick one. However, this has meant that Birdy has found herself unemployed with no real direction and so she takes the job in Loch Dorn as a desperate bid for living quarters and a wage without really considering the logistics. She is fantastically impulsive and I guess that fits with how her life has panned out.

The book is dotted with a few hilarious lines like this and although they’re brilliant, the best thing is that there aren’t too many of them. This means that they actually come at you quite unexpectedly which makes them funnier. I did snort-laugh a few times while reading it and there is no higher compliment I can ever pay a book.

This wonderful use of innuendo is testament to brilliant comedic writing too. It’s a great example of small town humour that almost feels unintentional because the conversation flows so naturally. It makes the reader feel like they’re in on some kind of inside joke between the characters, which I loved.

Birdy and Heather’s friendship is beautiful and I was really worried that it would be ruined when Heather finally learned the truth. They have a wonderful unique bond that can only be achieved between women who have been through everything together. However, although the tight cords of female friendship are incredibly strong, they are rarely unbreakable. Birdy is essentially risking Heather’s professional reputation by assuming her identity throughout the novel and Heather is well within her rights to cancel the friendship over that. That was definitely a huge concern for me for most of the book.

We get glimpses into Birdy’s past and that’s where a lot of the darkness of the novel lies. Her relationship with her parents is very strained due to her father being an alcoholic. This is reflected during her time at Loch Dorn too, when she realises what’s really going on with bar manager Bill. Her self-esteem isn’t great due to being consistently mistreated but she still manages to portray this confident, caring persona. Although she is incredibly messy, in some ways Birdy is an inspiration to anyone who has come from a troubled background. She would probably never agree with that assessment but I felt a huge amount of pride for her by the end of the book.

With this being a lovely summer rom-com, of course there is a budding romance to enjoy too. Birdy finds herself falling for the handsome, charming chef James. But he knows her as Heather, a sophisticated wine expert, so you can see how their romance doesn’t get off to the best of starts. Compared to Birdy’s on-off, obnoxious boyfriend Tim, James wins on every count, so I was willing her to come clean and for him to somehow be OK with everything!

There are a few places where the novel seems to pause and appreciate the beautiful scenery that surrounds it. I know that so much of rural Scotland is literally breathtaking and I loved taking in these views with Birdy. There is no greater pleasure than taking the time to enjoy nature and the peace it brings to a troubled soul.

The Summer Job is a laugh-out-loud page-turner that you will devour this season. Birdy is a wonderful, relatable narrator and the premise is a very unique one. It balances the light-hearted ridiculousness with the more serious issues perfectly. I honestly couldn’t put it down and inhaled it in one sitting.