Lizzie & Dante
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The insightful, audacious, and deeply romantic story of a woman whose life turns upside down after she meets an enigmatic chef on vacation in Italy, from a New York Times bestselling author
“Delicious.”—People • “Smart, sexy and funny, full of joy in simple pleasures.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
What if falling in love means breaking someone’s heart?
On the heels of a difficult break-up and a devastating diagnosis, Shakespeare scholar Lizzie Delford decides to take one last lavish vacation on Elba, the sun-kissed island off the Italian coast, with her best friend and his movie-star boyfriend. Once settled into a luxurious seaside resort, Lizzie has to make big decisions about her future, and she needs the one thing she may be running out of: time.
She leaves the yacht owners and celebrities behind and sneaks off to the public beach, where she meets a sardonic chef named Dante, his battered dog, Lulu, and his wry daughter, Etta, a twelve-year-old desperate for a mother. While Dante shows Lizzie the island’s secrets, and Etta dazzles with her irreverent humor, Lizzie is confronted with a dilemma. Is it right to fall in love if time is short? Is it better to find a mother briefly, or to have no mother at all? And most pressingly, are the delicacies of life worth tasting, even if you will get to savor them only for a short while?
A luscious story of love, courage, and Italian wine, Lizzie & Dante demands to know how far we should travel to find a future worth fighting for.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Hollywood glamour, Mediterranean beauty, and a surprisingly down-to-earth whirlwind courtship fuel this dreamy romance from best-selling author Mary Bly. With the help of her high-flying actor friend Rohan, cancer-stricken literature professor Lizzie impulsively travels to the idyllic Italian island of Elba. On a picturesque beach, she has a chance encounter with Dante, a confident Italian chef whose life turns out to be more complicated than he initially lets on. With an intoxicating mix of breezy escapism and poignant realism, Bly crafts a smart love story that doesn’t shy away from its characters’ flaws or life’s knotty complexities. If you’re looking for a romance novel that appreciates the messiness of real love, Lizzie and Dante is it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bly (who writes romances as Eloisa James) delivers an affecting story of a Shakespeare professor with stage 3 cancer and a handsome Italian chef, her first book published without the pseudonym. Dante has a restaurant on the Italian island of Elba, where Lizzie is visiting on a sort of working vacation. When she and Dante meet on the beach, the chemistry between them is undeniable, but Lizzie has given up on men; in fact, she's more or less given up on life, having given away most of her possessions and informed her doctor she'll forego treatment after the last, failed round of chemo. But the attraction between the two proves too strong, and Lizzie and Dante become lovers, a situation complicated by Dante's 12-year-old daughter, Etta, who is searching for a mother figure. Bly renders her characters in pliant and incisive prose; the sex scenes are sexy and the portrait of a woman embarking on the romance of her life while running on borrowed time feels authentic and poignantly drawn, and never mawkish. The nascent relationship between Lizzie and Etta, meanwhile, is especially moving. Bly handles a delicate subject with aplomb.
