Susan Napier is trying to save her family's once thriving high-end restaurant empire that only has a single place left the original Elliott's in Edinburgh due to mismanagement and in the case of her father, neglect.. Everyone loved a good Jane Austen adaptation and All Stirred Up does not disappoint. Susan while dealing with her scatterbrained family, rampant sexism, an annoying reporter and another interfering family member is pitted against the former love of her life who is opening a fancy new restaurant in Edinburgh. Will the competition rekindle their once flaming romance or will they both crash and burn under the strain and close quarters?

I'm going to be TOTALLY honest here and say that I DNF'd this book at about the 45% mark. I REALLY try to not do that with books when I'm gifted an ARC because I feel I owe it to the publisher and author to give it a fair review, but I just have too many books in my pile that I an anxious to read to keep plugging away on something that felt like a chore. I was really intrigued by the premise of this book, but I found it to be tedious to actually read and I just couldn't make myself care about the story or the characters. There are plenty of readers who loved this book, so I have no doubt it was just not a good fit for my personal tastes or my current mood or something, but this wasn't a winner for me.

I'm giving it 3 stars because I don't feel like it's fair to rate it lower than that when I read less than half of the book.

This was a lovley read. I enjoyed almost being walked around Edinburgh as the descriptions of the city were detailed and picturesque. I could imagine myself in this story as a by-stander, watching and willing it to all be OK in the end.
Thanks to the publishers and Net Galley for the ARC copy for review.

DNF'd - this one was not for me.

I found the third person perspective and detailed descriptions of the Scottish setting took me out of the story.

Also I found Susan a bit frustrating as a character.

I found this book very slow. It was hard to stay focused when reading it. To much time was spent focusing on the restaurant instead of the relationships between the characters.

Inspired by Austen's Persuasion, Moore tells the story of a second chance love story between Susan Napier and Chris Baker. Susan is trying to save Elliot's, her family last remaining flagship restaurant in Edinburgh and Chris is there to open up his own restaurant. The two main characters did not have much interaction until a bit over halfway through the book. Despite its slow pacing, I still enjoyed this book.

2.5 stars
It was an ok read for me. I am to a high end restaurants the of person. so this one did not interest me all that much, to be honest.

A Jane Austen Persuasion retelling? Sign me up. This is about two chiefs who are former exes running into each other again and both opening up restaurants and finding themselves crashing into each other at every turn. While this is a modern and somewhat new retelling of Persuasion, I sadly just couldn’t get into as much as I would have liked. The pacing was a bit slow and it mainly focused on each of the characters’ restaurant remolding. The romance didn’t exactly happen till about 60%into the book. I connect really connect to any of the characters and all the family drama. In the end, this retelling wasn’t for me, but hey maybe it will be for

Thank you NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books and Brianne Moore for gifting me an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
I’ll start by saying I have not read a single Jane Austin novel so the fact that this is a re-telling has zero impact on my opinion! I have no idea what any of those books are even about to be honest. Such a bad book lover!
The first half of this book is less romance and more restaurant. This is a slow burn, my favorite kind of romance to read! The steam level in this was VERY tame, but still enjoyable to read without being overly boring. I wouldn’t say this blew me away by any means, but i’m not upset I read it

I DEVOURED this book. In multiple ways, because the food descriptions had me starving the entire time.

I'm a sucker for an Austen Retelling. I'm an extra sucker for a Persuasion retelling because it's my favorite. I can be picky about the retellings for this one because of that though. I adored All Stirred Up. It was amazing, and I read it in one sitting.

Review published on Goodreads - 30/06/2020

Synopsis: Our heroine Susan leaves London, where the family restaurant opened by her grandfather closes. She travels up to Edinburgh to save their last remaining restaurant.
Although, she does not expect that her ex-boyfriend, now celebrity chef, is also heading to Scotland to open his own restaurant.

What I loved most about this book is that I felt like I was back in Edinburgh, experiencing the festival season along with our set of characters. The book would sometimes make a small pause in the story to describe streets, buildings, people...
The story is also heavily focused on the remodeling of the restaurant and descriptions of food, but that did not bother me in the slightest, also made me quite hungry at times.
I also appreciated to see a representation of health anxiety in this book.

The only critic I would have about the story was that I felt really slow for the most part, and really rushed in the last couple of chapters. I would have enjoyed more of a slower buildup to the romance between the main characters.

With the family fortune dwindling, Susan Napier finds herself tasked with trying to salvage her family’s once highly-reputed restaurant empire in the form of re-inventing Elliot’s, her grandfather’s first (and now only remaining) restaurant. But the cooking world is small, and Susan soon finds herself crossing paths with a former flame, Chris, who, riding on his fame as a chef and judge of a TV cooking show, has returned to Scotland to open his own restaurant. Though memories of their rough break-up linger, Susan and Chris still find themselves drawn to each other. With everything on the line, can these two overcome the past, or are some memories too damaging to be conquered?

I read this book without having read Austen’s “Persuasion” first, so I’m unable to draw comparisons between the two. That being said, I did enjoy the story. I am a sucker for any novel that drips with food descriptions, and this story is one of them. The main protagonists are sweet, and, while they have a “past” together, I liked that they worked to be professional and not drag each other down. Both Susan and Chris deal with grief and are on a path to healing, but it doesn’t occur easily or all at once. I wish more detail had been given to Chris’s own troubles throughout the story, though, as they felt a little shoe-horned in during the latter half of the piece.

Two of my favorite side characters are Gloria and Beth, both of whom are brash, bright, and unapologetic in their views. I loved the times they appeared to steer the protagonists. Some of the characters were unlikable, such as Bernard (Susan’s father) and Meg (Susan’s youngest sister), but Moore works to provide nuance to them. In the end, while they still weren’t my favorite characters, I did have an understanding for why they were the way they were.

Overall, this book is a sweet story brimming with moments of personal strength, various depictions of grief, and forgiveness. I appreciated that the path to reconciliation between Susan and Chris wasn’t quick or easy, making it one of the more realistic love stories I’ve read lately. The ending of the story definitely feels “earned” as a result. This book is not a romance (in fact, there are times that it feels more like a restaurant success story than a love story), but it does end with a happily ever after.

***ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for my review.

This book was very good but it's so frustrating to see two people who should probably be together and work on their issues and figure out what they want to do come together and fall apart so many times. Either with people interfering or them getting in their own way. I think if you would take away anything from this it will be to go for it regardless of what people think and if you need a pep talk to get yourself ready for something then that's what really matters. Live for you and the rest will follow!

All Stirred Up is a cute debut story by Brianne Moore. I enjoyed going on the journey with Susan as she took over the family restaurant and watching her grow along the way. As her ex-boyfriend Chris re-enters her life as they are working at rival restaurants, I liked how they slowly came back into each other’s life. The side story with Susan’s sisters and family I thought at times dragged the book down. Warning, reading this will definitely make you hungry with all the food talk!

Overall this book felt a bit lacking for me. It took a bit too long to get to the romance and had more emphasis on the food/restaurant angle than I was expecting. Overall it fell more like general/womens fiction than romance.

Find myself loving this book. Fun read. It has all things I like in a book. Must read book. It had food and love. Yeah

Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC and to have the pleasure of sharing my honest opinion.

All Stirred Up bu Brianne Moore is a loose retelling of Persuasion by Jane Austen. The story offers a light-romance that allows the reader to get lost in all the food details throughout the entire book. As a wannabe chef, this story spoke to me on many levels; Susan going through the struggles of keeping her family's high-end restaurant afloat while dealing with many of life's challenges, such as heartbreak and family burdens. As Susan tends to these challenges, her ex-boyfriend of ten years comes back into the picture to "stir things up."

I enjoyed cozying up to this book, but it was difficult feeling sympathy for Susan's family. They all expect Susan to fix all the issues without lifting a finger to help. To me, her family all seem a bit disdainful. However, the descriptions of food and scenery were enough to provide some enjoyment from the plot. Moore does a fantastic job of transporting you in the beautiful Edinburgh (even though I've never been there myself).

As for the romance spectrum of the book, I was hoping for a little more details than the PG-kissing. I believe that Moore could have thickened the plot much more with Susan and Chris. I'm a reader who is not very patient with a slow-burn story - I like a quick build up.

I would recommend this title to those readers who enjoying having well-developed characters and would be fine with food descriptions to make up for the lack of steamy scenes.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable read, although not much was "stirred up" for me.

Thank you!!

This book is a second chance romance but for me the story took way to long to get to anything remotely resembling romance. The story is set in Scotland where Susan is going back to the very start of the family restaurant business after the epic failure of many of the other family restaurants. Chris Baker, her ex from 10 yrs ago, comes back to his home town, same town as Susan, to start a new restaurant after a successful stint in the US as a celebrity chef. I had three main issues with the story, 1. it was very slow with so much talk about the remodel of Susan's restaurant that it took away from the Susan and Chris story, 2. the characters hardly spend any time together through 85% of the book and for me that’s not very romantic, 3 the third person POV was at times difficult to read.

I was provided with an electronic ARC through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is a contemporary retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion. If you like watching the Food Network, you'll probably like this book.
Susan Napier comes to Scotland to take over her family's last surviving restaurant after their cooking dynasty failed. She has a lot of work to do to restore the reputation of her grandfather's legacy of fine dining. But competition from a new restaurant started by none other than her ex, the man she ghosted ten years ago makes her task even more difficult. Chris Baker gives up his job as the popular star of a television cooking show to return home and start his own restaurant. After being fired by Napier's and dumped by Susan at the same time, Chris harbors resentment against her and her entire family. But when a cooking competition pits them against a third rival, will the resulting comeraderie bring them back together?
I absolutely hated Susan's entire family, finding them shallow and hateful. But I enjoyed the main characters and their interactions with each other and the employees in their restaurant. This was a cute story about second chances and, of course, FOOD.
I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley. The views and opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I really enjoyed this book and devoured it in two sittings - it was a fun and easy read. I didn't want to be constantly comparing to Persuasion so I tried not to think of it as a re-telling and I think it worked well as a story on its own merit.