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Lizzie & Dante has all the elements of a great romance – a woman on vacation in Italy, a hot Italian chef with great moves in and out of the kitchen, days on the beach, and nights under the stars. But it also has one element of a great tragedy – Lizzie is sick with cancer.
Lizzie Delford, a Shakespeare professor from NYC, is on vacation on the Italian island of Elba with her best friend, Grey, and his boyfriend Rohan. They are travelling in style – Grey is a popular horror novelist and Rohan is a famous actor. Lizzie would rather avoid the yacht crowd and spends her days sunning, reading, and napping on the public beach where one day she meets Dante. She has no interest in talking to anyone or making new friends; she is slowly saying good-bye to the ones she has and is busy giving her things away. But Dante is persistent and invites Lizzie and her friends to dine at his restaurant.
When they arrive at the restaurant, Rohan is thrilled. It turns out Dante is the famous chef Nicola Moretti – the one whose restaurant in NYC Rohan moved apartments to be closer to.
“Met a chef,” Rohan said. “You met the chef! Like if you had one of those half-assed conversations at a party where someone promises you a part, but later you found out you’d been talking to Martin Scorsese.”
Dante is smitten with Lizzie (as is his twelve-year-old daughter Etta). He spends his free time visiting with Lizzie and taking her around the island. Etta does the same, taking Lizzie on their own adventures when Dante is busy. She would love for Dante to find someone and she’s voting for Lizzie. Etta would also love to have a mother. As you can imagine, this leads to an enormous quandary for Lizzie. Is it okay to fall in love with Dante and Etta knowing that she may only have a few short years (or even months) left? And how does she even begin to tell them this?
The cast of Lizzie & Dante is delightful. I fell in love with Dante, who is kind, funny, supportive, and he can cook – if he does the dishes voluntarily he’d be my dream man! He’s scrumptious. Lizzie is very easy to like. She’s in a tough situation but manages to be an awesome friend and a great support to Etta. Grey and Rohan are also well-developed. Lizzie and Grey have an interesting history that adds another dramatic element to the story, and Rohan is desperately trying to rewrite Romeo and Juliet as a modern love story (with Lizzie’s help). It becomes apparent that Rohan is pretty clueless about the actual Romeo and Juliet love story – even though he’s convinced investors to back his idea. His attempts at framing the classic love story/tragedy into something new and fresh are entertaining.
Lizzie & Dante is written by Mary Bly, also known as Eloisa James to romance fans. But, although this story is very romantic, it is not strictly a romance novel. Readers know right from the beginning that a happy ever after is unlikely and it is definitely harder to lose yourself in a love story when you are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Even with the question of Lizzie’s illness shadowing the story and the romance, Lizzie & Dante ends up being an uplifting novel, celebrating life in the moment and friendships that last a lifetime. There were a few minor hiccups in the story but on the whole, I enjoyed reading Lizzie and Dante’s story and enthusiastically recommend it.
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Grade: B+
Book Type: Women's Fiction
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 06/06/21
Publication Date: 06/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Related Reviews
Evelyn – this seems like it is uplifting despite the difficult content. Do you think the “tearjerker” tag would be appropriate or not?
No, I don’t think it’s a tearjerker. I’m an easy crier and this did not get me crying.
Great review, Evelyn. You’ve definitely piqued my interest. I noticed the genre is listed as Women’s Fiction, so my understanding is an HEA/HFN is not required. Is your grade based on this book’s being Women’s Fiction, or is it made in comparison to romances?
That leads me to a more general AAR-related question: When non-romance genres are being reviewed, such as suspense, historical fiction, etc, are the grades assigned by comparing the books to others in that same genre? Or to romances? I assume that they are reviewed vis a vis other books in the same genre, even if there is a strong romance component, otherwise they would suffer due to lack of an HEA/HFN in many cases.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I tend to grade based on what the book is marketed to me as.
For instance, I downgraded Abby Jimenez’s The Friend Zone because it was marketed as a funny romance, but was actually wrenching women’s fiction. I would have been willing to grade higher it as women’s fiction if that’s how it had been billed, but if they want to sell it to romance readers, they have to meet us where we are, and they failed. However, when I put it into the DB, I put it in as Women’s Fiction, so that AAR wouldn’t be perpetuating the bad classification.
Just speaking for myself…when I grade a book it’s really based on how the book hit me emotionally and how good the writing/characterization is – so did the story move me. I also think – would I buy this, would I gift it? I do think about the genre. If it’s marketed as a romance it better have a HEA/HFN. With WF I usually expect less romance, if any, so I don’t compare them to romance novels. I compare them to the genre they are competing against.
Here’s a link to the article Caroline wrote about grading books. It’s terrific!
https://allaboutromance.com/what-grades-mean-to-me-by-caroline-russomanno/
Your explanations make perfect sense, and I appreciate the clarification. And yes, that is an excellent, thoughtful article by Caroline. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you!!!
Just to echo what others have said; if a book is “sold” to me as a romance and it isn’t, or if the romance is a much smaller part of the story than I’ve been led to believe, I’m likely to downgrade it a bit. BUT if I know what to expect going in and I enjoy the book, then I grade it according to how much I enjoyed it, how well written it is, etc. etc. For example. I just gave an A to Loreth Anne White’s new book – not a romance at all, but a fantastic read.
We don’t – well, I don’t – have a different grading system depending on the genre. A good book is a good book is a good book. But I think that what we all do here is try to make clear in our reviews what readers can expect from a book – whether it’s in the genre classification or in the body of the review.
I don’t use my expectations of a book to influence the grade. I have a rubric in my head that I apply to all books. Does the plot make sense? Do the characters behave in believable ways? Is the prose smooth and clear? Do I want to keep turning the pages?
So, to me, I wouldn’t grade a book lower because it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. We all have our own way of writing–none is better than another–and that’s mine!
Dabney, I think it’s interesting that you are able to set aside any expectations in grading a book. Do you think it’s because of your years of experience? I find that my expectations can greatly influence how I feel about a book, movie or TV show. Especially if there is a lot of hype. Or the blurb promises one thing but the book delivers another. I always have an expectation going in, and it would be hard to set it aside.
I don’t think I’m much of an expectations person in general. I tend to assess most things on their own terms. That’s not always true–if I was super excited about a book and it sucked, I’ll acknowledge that bias. But, in general, I start most things with a clean(ish) slate.
I think that perhaps I should have said that while I don’t let my expectations affect the grade – in that I don’t think “oh, this isn’t a romance therefore I’m going to give it a lower grade” – I do think expectations can feed in to how much we enjoy a book (or not), because I might not enjoy the book as much if I was expecting someting else. It’s like those times you’re really in the mood for cheescake and there’s only apple pie left – the apple pie is good, but isn’t quite what you wanted!
Everyone grades, to a certain extent, from a place about whether or not the book worked for them. I believe that as long as a reviewer explains a grade, readers will understand whether those same likes or dislikes apply to them as well.
Dabney – your reviewing parameters are pretty much what I have used over the years when writing reviews – and reading them. I don’t mind being surprised by a book straying out of its “lane of traffic” as I can be very pleased with lovely prose, engaging characters, a good plot, some decent research and perhaps an explanation from the reviewer that such and such a book was more of an X genre rather than the Y genre it was sold as.
This is what I meant re my comment in the abortion post about romances being able to incorporate serious real life issues.
I have to know. Does she die? Email me and I’ll put it in with spoiler tags.