Let’s just start by saying the cover of this book is straight up adorable, and I’m obsessed. I loved getting to explore the Italian countryside and dream of eating all the food I want with Olive and Leo. However, I felt like our two MCs, while loveable, lacked chemistry. I didn’t get the giddy, kick-my-feet, butterfly feeling from those two like I was hoping. Overall fun and enjoyable book for the most part but would’ve liked to have been more excited about our MCs.

This is the perfect summer or vacation romance! It will make you want to travel, and luckily I read it while on a road trip with my family. You will want ALLLLLL the pasta, so maybe plan a little Italian dinner when you read.

Olive is a wonderful FMC, and while you will have moments of frustration with her, she is very believable and will feel like one of your best friends by the end. Leo is absolutely book boyfriend material.

There are several rom-com tropes covered here: enemies-to-lovers, only one bed, and forced proximity. There is a lot of depth to this story, including some heartache with complicated family relationships and death of a parent. They are handled beautifully with a kind touch.

Love this book, just hoping for a recipe book to come out next. ;)

Did I just return from a vacation in the Italian countryside? It sure feels like it after reading Just One Taste!
Olive's estranged father leaves his restaurant, Nicky's, to her when he passes away. He includes the final request that she complete the cookbook he'd been working on--and she must do so by traveling to three Italian destinations with his sous chef, Leo.
The journey is as delicious and delightful as you could imagine.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc!

I really enjoyed this one! The love story was sweet, but the best part was the connection to the environment. I truly felt like I was along on the trip with Leo and Olive in Italy. Such a great short read.

I would inject this very complicated enemies-to-lovers straight into my veins. Truly amazing. Toss in a little bit of daddy trauma, and this book is speaking my language. Would absolutely recommend.

This was a quick easy read that left me wanting to travel to Italy immediately! There was a good balance of the light hearted topics sprinkled with some heavier ones and it was just right.

This book did some things well- mainly the descriptions of food and the Italian setting. Anyone with a strong interest in those things has a good chance they’ll connect with this story. The romance side of it was fine- but anyone looking to read romance specifically may not be satisfied. The main character’s attraction for the mmc was very apparent and there was some tension there, but not as much as you would hope for a romance. There was no third act breakup, which I appreciated, but the tension kind of disappears as soon as they get together. The twist towards the end was unexpected, but it seemed just a little random and although the main character’s grief was well written, it was resolved maybe just a little too quickly considering how hard she is hit with it. Overall this book was enjoyable, but it’s not something I’ll think about later.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for providing me access to this eARC for my honest opinion!

Very fun, quick read! I loved the characters and storyline :)

Thank you NetGalley and Lizzy Dent!

I loved the set-up for this romance. Nothing better than all that tension coming from the situation with the restaurant and her dad. However, I wished for more spark between the two characters and felt their romance fell a little flat. Loved the friends and secondary characters, as well as the conflict with the mom.

Be warned, this book will have you wanting to take a trip to Italy ASAP. This was fun, but heavy at times, and I really enjoyed the cookbook writing aspect of it. While not my favorite of Lizzy Dent's books, I still really liked this.

This is my first read by Lizzy Dent, and it most certainly won’t be my last. I love, love, love romance novels, but I truly love when they’re a little more than I expect. Yes, I want my HEA and no, I’m not a high-angst reader, but I like some depth. Just One Taste strikes the perfect note. Travel, food, enemies to lovers (one of my FAVE tropes), great friendships, and great banter are all done so well, but it also dealt with some heavier subjects. Not enough to scare anyone away, but the perfect amount to make this more than a romcom. And don’t get me wrong, “just” a romcom is great in my book. This one just had that extra little oomph. Five stars. Highly recommend.

Cute story with heart. I enjoyed reading this book. It was a fast read with no surprises but it was enjoyable.

I loved this concept: food critic with restaurant owner father. Daddy issues abound. Enemies to lovers with the chef from her father”s restaurant?

It’s complex. It feels real. You have the love story between the chef and daughter as they make their way through Italy, but you also have the love story of a daughter learning to love her father again. Sensitive topics of loss of a parent, sure. But I think the author handles it well. Loved the twist at the end. Loved our happily ever after that the characters fought for through the whole book.

What could have made this better? More development of the characters and their backstories. Her feelings around her work. It lends itself to be tension of “will-she-won’t-she” but when the decision is made it feels slightly empty where we could be more on her side and celebratory with that development in the beginning.

Overall, 10/10 would recommend and glad I read.

I absolutely loved this book! I loved the characters and how the relationship blossomed! I loved how they worked together and how the story ended overall.

Just One Taste is a romance but it is more like a travel blog through Italy with delicious food, gorgeous scenery and nostalgia. It made me want to go to Italy right away to have a vespa ride through the hills, a picnic to listen to opera and a giant homemade meal with hundreds of third cousins in a backyard. The romance felt almost secondary to the scenery but thats ok, it ended up nice and I was happy to read it.

After Olive’s father dies, she inherits his Italian restaurant and must travel to Italy (with a HOT sous chef!!) to finish his cookbook.

Just One Taste was so fun to read because it included food, traveling/exploring and romance! These themes made for a very charming story. The story was a slow burn and while the characters did have good chemistry, I was left wanting more!

Dent handles the complex grief/emotions with losing an estranged parent with care but please check trigger warnings and read with caution 🫶🏻

3.5 rounded up!
**Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for the ARC and chance to read and review. All opinions are my own**

Lizzy Dent has a knack for creating fun worlds with colorful characters, and her heroines always are the perfect mix of flawed and relatable. Olive's journey to discover more about herself, her father and her future was delightful to read, and the relationship with Leo was fun to watch develop. I also finished the book desperately craving Italian food!

I ended up rating this more of a 3.5 rather than a 3, but I liked this one more than I thought I would. I liked that Olive and Leo didn't actually break up in the 3rd act, Olive just needed a bit of time and space to grow and think outside of her relationship and that just felt so mature to me (I kept forgetting that the characters weren't even 30 yet). I did think the "plot twist" felt kind of unnecessary and cheap, just because Olive already felt so detached from her dad, I didn't think there needed to be another reason for that detachment.

I could barely finish this, it had a lot of potential but just wasn't doing it for me. The pacing felt off and I honestly felt so distracted by the formatting errors and typos in this version that it was hard to read. I wasn't really rooting for either character and the chemistry didn't work for me.

Just One Taste
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Author: Lizzy Dent

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley and Penguin Group and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: 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.

My Thoughts: This was a sweet romance that had equal parts serious with laughable moments and enriched with touching heartfelt moments. We open up with Olive at a bar with her friends discussing her father’s recent passing and that he left the restaurant to her with one caveat. She has to travel to Italy to finish the cookbook her father started and she has to finish the cookbook with Leo. Leo was her father’s right hand person at the restaurant for over a decade. She plans to sell the restaurant just as soon as the cookbook is finished. We follow their adventure through Italy, as they spend more time together, will they fall into each other? Or will they do just as the planned, finish the cookbook and Olive selling the restaurant? This follows the tropes of enemies to lovers, summer trip, forced proximity, and one bed.

Olive is a food critic but is contemplating a career change. Olive is responsible for the region introductions (Sicily, Catania, and Liguria) while Leo is responsible for the recipes for these regions. Olive is independent, loyal, and fierce. Leo is charming, grumpy, and once you get past the wall he puts up, kind and compassionate. As these two travel through Italy, Olive is re-experiencing old memories through new adventures with Leo and this opens her eyes to more than just the restaurant. The characters were well developed with depth, witty banter, chemistry, and were intriguing. The author’s writing style was complex, spicy, poignant, heartfelt, and just beautiful. The author does an amazing job at detailing the Italy landscape, traditions, culture, and food. I really felt like I was there in Italy, traveling with Olive and Leo on their adventure. The author’s writing style was inviting and had me invested early on.

The only con for me is I would have liked a better window into Nicky, Olive’s father, through more of his cookbook being explained (maybe some of the intro paragraphs he “wrote”). Overall, this was an enjoyable read. I felt a rollercoaster of emotions from happiness, sadness, and tears (both happy and sad). This was more of a contemporary romance and not a romcom. I felt there was equal parts about the father-daughter relationship and their romance, one did not over power the others. I would highly recommend this to other readers. If you love Emily Henry or Abby Jimenez, you will love this story.