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.

This is for everyone who dreams about vacations roaming the Italian countryside (but also do not willingly leave their house), want to eat allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the pasta and cannoli (but are actively trying not to be the next person on My 600 Lb. Life), and fantasize about a slow burn turn hot and heavy romance with a new beau (but have been married nearly 30 years).

Olive’s father always chose “Nicky’s” - the restaurant he owned - over their family. It was the catalyst of her mother finally deciding to divorce him and strained her own relationship with him to the point where they shared only occasional phone calls. When he dies and leaves Nicky’s to her with a final request she finish penning the cookbook he had been working on – which she must do by traveling to the final three destinations of Sicily, Catania and Liguria with Leo, the restaurants sous chef – she has to deal with not only the grieving process, but whether to sell/not sell the restaurant and some unexpected feelings she finds herself catching for Leo.

I loved last year’s trip to Scotland where Birdy had to fake it ‘til she made it as a sommelier in The Summer Job. Being that I’m not a wino, but DEFINITELY an eatie, I loved this trip to Italy even more : ) Lizzy Dent is must read for fictional summertime getaways. Oh, and by the time I was done with this one I was all . . . . FEED ME! So much so that I made spaghetti and meatballs in 100 degree weather.

ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the trip through Italy and this book definitely made me hungry! I didn't quite connect to the characters or their relationship. They had great banter but felt more like good friends than in a real relationship. I would recommend this to someone looking for an easy beach read or something to take on vacation.

Many thanks to Penguin Group Putnam & NetGalley for this ARC in exchange of my honest review. All thoughts are my own

4.5 stars! Lizzy Dent is an autobuy author for me, so when I was able to read this as a digital arc, I was so excited! I rated this as 4.5 stars rounded down because I could not rally behind the FMC, Olive. I wanted to like her, but I just couldn’t. She had one redeeming turn near the end of the book, but she rubbed me the wrong way, and seemed like too little too late. After the twist, I understood a little bit more about why she acted the way that she did throughout the book, but it wasn’t enough to justify her actions prior to her dad’s death. Having lost my own dad, it hit close to home and not in the best way.

The MMC, Leo, was what really made me love the story. He is a great character and was honest and true to his passion as a chef and his love for food throughout everything. He was open and understanding, and even supportive of Olive when he didn’t have to be. The food also was a really fun part of this book! It felt like going to Italy and enjoying the best of the best foods all around the country! It also made me wish the cookbook was real so I could try some of the recipes they added!

Overall I really enjoyed the story, I just wish there would have been more redemption for Olive or some better kind of closure for her with her dad. I honestly wish that her dad hadn’t died, that she was going on this trip for him for some other reason, and that they were able to come together again and not have regrets.

I would definitely recommend this book to the right people, but I would also definitely include some disclaimers about Olive.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you Netgalley and GP's Putnam for the ARC.

Sadly I had to DNF at 20%. I was really excited about this book and at first this book really had my attention and then it just fell flat and I couldn't keep going. Though, I believe that this could definitely read nicely for some readers, it just didn't hit for me.

Some things I disliked:
- The pacing. It felt like Dent took a bunch of scenes she liked and threw them all together, and it felt repetitive. I understand Olive's trauma and her complicated relationship with her father, but it made her seem selfish and childish. It felt like Dent forgot to give Olive good traits.
- At nearly a quarter through the book, I feel like we should know more about the characters, or know more about their personalities, and we didn't. We knew some of Olive and Leo's complicated history with Olive's father but none of that felt like it was articulated onto the page. It felt like all I saw as Olive being mad at her dad and fighting with Leo again and again. Then I realized, I know even less about Leo.
- I was so excited for a more enemies to lovers, but at about 18%, Olive suddenly has feelings for him. Usually I'm okay with insta-love, but in cases like this I felt like we needed to see more genuine interactions with them, and I wanted Dent to show me WHY Olive was getting feelings for Leo. Instead I got annoyed because it felt like they had almost no chemistry between them and I wasn't feeling what Olive was feeling.

Things I liked:
- I really loved the backstory with Olive and her estrangement from her father. I really enjoyed seeing both her grief and her complicated feelings on the page. I wish she did more with this, but what she did felt repetitive and surface-level.

I really enjoyed this book! Olive and Leo were dynamic characters, and I enjoyed reading about them and their interactions. I almost wish that there were some more flashbacks with Olive and her dad, because I didn't feel like I fully understood her anger towards him or how their relationship functioned (I know they occasionally talked, but sometimes it seemed like they didn't talk at all, and honestly the dad often seemed more like a character created purely to move the plot along). Reading about Italy was amazing, and the descriptions of food made me so hungry. I would recommend this book to many patrons, I think it hits a lot of different notes for readers. It's romantic, yes, but it's also about grief and travel and family. Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for this ARC!

This is one of those romcoms that I want immediately made into a movie. A beautiful love story and a thoughtful approach to family complexity. A romance with pasta on the cover was sure to be a winner with me, but I thought Dent nailed this one.

Thanks to Penguin Group Putnam and Netgalley for the eARC.

I am a sucker for a book about hospitality due to being in the industry for 15 years. I thought this story was adorable. I absolutely did not see the twist coming or expected a twist at all! I loved both of the main characters and loved them together!

Thanks to Penguin and Netgalley for this advanced copy!

Olive and Leo are such a delight to follow in this great book about two people traveling, eating, and grieving their way through Italy. Olive wants to sell her recently deceased father's restaurant where Leo is the sous chef with a lot of ideas, but first they need to finish a cookbook. The premise is a bit ridiculous, but Olive and Leo are not. They are funny and adorable, and honestly, who wouldn't fall in love on this trip? I loved Dent's dialogue and her descriptions of Italy's scenery and food. And I appreciated how Olive and Leo fought for themselves as well as for their future with the restaurant. There was good give and take and I felt like the happy ending was earned.

So much fun!

When Emily Henry says she loves a book, you know it's going to be good! The perfect romantic adventure set in Italy.

Delicious romance /contemporary fiction. I especially liked the ending being a little bittersweet and not your typical "happily ever after" notion. The vibes were perfect.

Set in Italy, a fun beach read with some meat on its bones. Lizzy Dent has written a fun book. Dent is one of my go to authors for fun lighter reads.

Possible triggers: Parental death, sudden death, family secrets

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.