Lizzie and Dante by Mary Bly was such a delight to read. The story had so much going on. It wasn’t just about Lizzie and Dante, it was about the side characters and how they interacted as well. There was a lot of ugly crying for me, so be prepared with lots of tissues! I definitely recommend. Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for a chance to read an early copy.

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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An incredible story of love and possibility. The setting of the book whisks you away to the Italian island of Elba and follows a cast of characters who are discovering, growing and attempting to heal as they navigate their time and glowing energy into the beauty of the island. Lizzie & Dante lead the cast with a subtle, sweet, and simple yet complex romance. Their relationship, so easy and reassuring in it's simplicity becomes incredibly sweeping and epic in a way that just sneaks up on you as a reader. The romance is sexy and so fitting to the setting as you can imagine. It was so wonderful to live it through the words of this gifted author. The story is charged with a lightness and a freedom while simultaneously being heavy. It's friendships and new found relationships of all sort but the abundance of love reigns supreme and so important. Each relationship is rich with emotion and deeply thoughtful. The whole story is thought provoking that it's a heady reminder to live and to love in excess. I love the way it's structured. Mary Bly's writing proved to be extraordinarily welcoming, forthright and honest, and just beautiful. This book was a gift to read. I'm in awe of the story. And feel so grateful to have read it and bask in it's simplistic brilliance. A physical copy is going to look amazing on my bookshelf. For fans of sweeping romance with lovely characters, amazing settings, and great writing don't miss Lizzie & Dante.

4.5⭐️ for a wonderful love story between friends, lovers, grown up and teens, as well as lovers. A story about not giving up and finding home and belonging in a family where few are related. And, peppered with Italian food and wine. Thank you Dial Press for ARC. Now available.

I loved Lizzie and Dante by Mary Bly. Lizzie and Dante is the first book that I have read by Mary Bly, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mary Bly has provided her readers with amazing characters who feel like best friends! Who doesn't love sexy men, strong, passionate females, and loving friends, who always support one another? Mary Bly has shown that she is a wonderful storyteller. Lizzie and Dante did not disappoint, I could not put it down and loved every page. I enjoy how Mary Bly writes from the perspective of the main characters. That way you get to know what is going on in each of their minds. Lizzie and Dante is a wonderful love story and is filled with heartbreaking and heartwarming moments. I love the lighter moments where I find myself smiling and laughing out loud and the bittersweet moments that cause me to sigh, say aww to myself with tears filling my eyes. Lizzie and Dante be filled with such moments, and with so much more. It is filled with all those things that we have come to love and expect in a love story, especially the poignant and bittersweet moments that filled this page turner. Who doesn’t love a story about a love at first sight story? Lizzie and Dante is the story of Lizzie Delford, Shakespearean professor, and Dante Moretti, a chef, with restaurants in Elba, Italy and New York City and a single dad to twelve-year-old, Etta. Lizzie has been diagnosed Stage Three cancer, and heads to Elba with her first love and best friend, Grey and Grey’s lover, Rohan. Rohan wants to produce a new version of the story of Romeo and Juliet and has invited Lizzie to Elba, all expenses paid, to help him with the story. Lizzie and Dante meet, while Lizzie is sunbathing on the public beach. While Lizzie and Dante spend more time with one another over the subsequent weeks, between visits to the beach and dinners served in his restaurant, things begin to change between them. Lizzie only sees it as a summer romance and does not plan to tell Dante or Etta about her diagnosis. Grey and Lizzie meet while in foster care, it was Grey’s first placement. Grey grew to become Lizzie’s first love, until he told her that he was gay, when she thought, he was going to propose. Grey wants Lizzie to fight her cancer and have a surgery to prolong her life, Lizzie is not certain that she is willing to have the surgery. I love all the poignant moments and heartbreaking dialogue that takes place in Lizzie and Dante among all the characters. Eventually, Lizzie and Dante decide to spend whatever time that she has left together. I love when Lizzie and Dante get real with their true feelings and opens up to each other, and the impact that their love has and will have on Etta. I love how Lizzie and Dante show their vulnerable sides and how all the characters in Lizzie and Dante change during the story. I love that Lizzie is willing to give a relationship with Dante a chance, no matter how short lived the relationship may be. I enjoyed the parts of the story that were told from Etta’s perspective and all the guidance that everyone gave her because she has grown up without a mother. I loved that Lizzie and Dante is filled with valuable life lessons, and that each statement is more profound than the next. My favorite part of their love story is the significance of the engagement ring that Dante gives to Lizzie. My favorite part of the book was the epilogue and that it takes place five years later and is told from Etta’s perspective, so that the reader can get caught up with what has been happening in the lives of all the characters. I love how the epilogue went above and beyond the normal happily ever after. I love that because of Lizzie’s love and support their lives changed for the better. I enjoyed how Grey was willing to make changes in his life. I loved Lizzie and Dante’s love story and that Lizzie was willing to change because she was willing to battle her cancer because of Dante’s love. Lizzie and Dante contains all the things that I have come to love most and expect in a love story, great characters and setting, bittersweet moments and the plot twist that ties it all together. I love all the descriptions of Elba, the Bonaparte hotel, and the history lesson that Mary Bly detailed in Lizzie and Dante. Amazing story. I could not put it down. Highly recommend this bittersweet romance.

What a beautiful book! I was completely swept away on Elba with Lizzie and Dante's love story. This is about choosing love, choosing the act of loving. There is family, heart, some humor, so much love. Elba is almost it's own character here, too, with the food and the people, the ocean and the sand. While the epilogue is it's own heartbreak, it is also so full of love and any ending that is different, would be a disservice to the characters. I've heard Mary Bly call this the book of her heart and you can feel that. The early chapters feel a little like a stream of consciousness, of characters talking with and over each other, a whirlwind that just pulls you in. Then you are fully invested in them all, with the family they have created together, with the bonds that tie them together, and all the love they feel for each other.
As Ruby says, there is nostalgia, a memory of a time and it should be treasured and held and perhaps more often recognized when it is happening. This all feels like a beautiful view on their nostalgia that they will all carry forward. I highly recommend this one.

Romance genre readers should know this is not a romance genre novel.
CW: cancer, growing up in the foster care system, loss of parents

4.5 Stars. Oh my gosh my heart. I sobbed through the entire end of this book. I loved everything about Lizzie and Dante's story. It felt like pure magic in the beautiful setting of Elba. I have never been there, but I absolutely fell in love with this little island with every page of this book. I could smell the sea and taste every bite of food, it was truly a transformative read. Although this wasn't necessarily a happy ending book, my heart felt so full of life and hope as I read it. This is a must read. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the ARC.

This was a beautifully written love story. It was so realistic with showing how happiness and sadness sometimes intermingle. Also the journey to love also includes learning more about yourself. Lizzie decides to go on vacation in Elba after both a break up and a heartbreaking medical diagnosis. She meets Dante and his 12 year old daughter Etta who show her around the island. The emotions in this book were expressed beautifully and I felt every emotion along with the characters. The island of Elba itself was a character in the book. Learning to live life to the fullest and fight for every second of happiness is something we all can relate. Although my emotions were all over the place I felt that this was an amazing reading experience.

I needed to take a few days to write a review about this book, because anytime I thought about this story I would start crying. Are they sad tears? Are they happy tears? That's really the question and honestly it's a mix of both.This book was absolutely fabulous from the start! All the characters are super endearing and you want to know their stories as well as Lizzie and Dante's. I will not say anything else because we will veer into spoiler territory way too quickly. This book was extremely well done and I'd love if we got a few more Mary Bly books but I'm happy with the Eloisa James ones too!

I received a copy of this book for review from NetGalley. I am a big fan of Eloisa James, so I was really excited to see a contemporary book by Mary Bly. I am glad, however, that I knew going in that this novel is more on the women's fiction side of things than the romance, because it is quite different than her usual works. Lizzie and Dante is written with her trademark sense of humor, intelligent characters, and gorgeous descriptions of the scenery. (I have never wanted to visit Elba before I read this book, and now I feel like I have to go someday. ) However, you know pretty much from the beginning that this cannot possibly have a standard happily ever after, no matter how much you want the characters to be escape their fates, which tinges the book with a bit of sadness from the very first chapter. I grew very attached to the whole cast of characters, especially Etta, and I loved the sense of found family that they created during their summer on Elba. I cannot say too much more without spoilers, but on the plus side, I found it absolutely delightful how much Lizzie loved Terry Pratchett, and it made me so happy. Overall, this book made me feel things, and I was not ready for it. It was beautifully written, clever, occasionally hilarious, and it might require an emergency box of tissues. I loved it, and I'm also still a bit mad at it.

I could not finish this book. Perhaps it’s just because I’m used to Bly’s work that she writes as Eloisa James, or maybe it’s that women’s fiction is not a genre that I connect with - but I read about halfway through and had no desire to continue.

The writing style was too jarring for the subject matter. The characters felt too flippant and glib about the situations. And there was waaaaaay too much message fic involved (the teenager wanted to be an even more obnoxious version of Greta Thunberg and I wanted to slap her every time she opened her mouth). The two gay best friends... good grief, how much more cliche and bizarre can you get?

In the end, this was simply not for me. I appreciate the chance to read an eARC, but I’m not interested in finishing.

On the heels of a devastating diagnosis, Lizzie travels to Elba with her best friend and his movie star boyfriend.

There she meets a celebrity chef, Dante, and his precocious daughter, Etta. Spending time with them has Lizzie falling in love with both. But is it fair to a little girl to give her a mother only for the short time she has left? Is it fair to Dante?

Lizzie and Dante is a lovely exploration of love in its many forms. And you’ll want a vacation on Elba by the time you turn the last page. Highly recommended!

I adored this book from the first page! I just knew I would cry! An amazing heartfelt story filers with loving characters !! Highly recommend

I absolutely loved this book by Mary Bly. The setting is beautiful, the characters are wonderful and so well drawn, and the plotting is rock solid. What a joy it was to read - a triumph!

DNFed at 37%. I can see why it would appeal to other people, but it seems like Eloisa James/Mary Bly is no longer for me, under either author name. It’s set up to be a beautiful, tragic love story after a woman receives a terminal diagnosis, and given the author’s background, you’d think she could build a convincing love story, even if the trajectory is different. Not so. The characters lack chemistry, and if I had to read another word about them having sex (thank God this wasn’t described explicitly), I was going to scream. Maybe in the second half it gets more impactful. But I could only read so much about these two wooden characters “screwing” in weird places before I had had enough. The only potential saving Grace is the daughter, Etta, but even her moments weren’t enough to convince me it was worth slogging through the rest of it.

When I started reading this book, I didn’t care for the part that seemed a little too real life for me (I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t read it yet), and if it had been written by any other author, I would have stopped reading. As it is, I read the end to see if it at least had a happy ending. Again, I don’t want to spoil the story for those who haven’t read it yet, so I will just say that it was such a good ending that I finished reading the book. Throughout the book, Ms. Bly will make you laugh and cry and smile and sigh, so keep plenty of tissues next to you, but definitely read this book.

Lizzie, a professor of Shakespeare, is dying. Her BFF Gray, who she met as a teen in foster care, has swept her off to Elba to help his love Rohan, a movie star, work on Romeo and Juliet, which he wants to direct. She's made the decision not to continue treatment but then....she meets Dante by chance on the beach. And his adolescent daughter Etta. Dante, as it turns out. is a Michelin starred chef who Rohan (and the foodie world) worships. You know how this is gonna go but wait- don't turn away. It's a lovely book that's as much about the family we make as it is about the romance between Lizzie and Dante. Beyond Lizzie and Dante, Rohan is a hoot, Etta just sassy enough, Gray terrific, Ruby thoughtful and funny and so on. The atmospherics are terrific - I want to go to Elba and walk through the market and see the black sand beach. This could have easily gone a different way but it's poignant and sweet. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I really enjoyed this.

Beautiful and Poetic

Lizzie meets Dante at one of the most pivotal moments of her life and she knows she can’t keep him and his daughter for her own. Dante and Etta know that Lizzie and her found family are meant to be theirs and they aren’t giving up without a fight.

Reading Lizzie and Dante felt like meeting up with an old friend you haven’t seen in years; all the familiar elements of their personality are present but there are new facets to discover too. I’ve read Eloisa James novels for more than a decade and I could definitely feel and hear that familiarity while reading Lizzie and Dante but there was something more in this one. Aside from the contemporary language, diversity of the characters, and modern struggles there was also a poetic feel to the writing that fit so perfectly.

I absolutely loved Etta and Dante and the way they knew Lizzie was theirs. I struggled right alongside Lizzie, Grey, and Rohan figuring out their love. And my heart broke and was healed right along with all of the characters’. This was not only a love story between Lizzie and Dante but between Lizzie and Etta, Lizzie and Grey, Lizzie and Rohan, Lizzie and Ruby and most importantly Lizzie and Lizzie.

I would love to read more of this version of Mary Bly/Eloisa James!

Please be sure to check out some of the content warnings for this one as their are some discussions and scenes that may be difficult or triggering for some readers.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book but all opinions are my own.

This is the kind of romance that I enjoy. It's....full of emotion and heart...and written for adults! Many other romances tend to be regency era, BDSM filled or just....too Christian.

Lizzie is done. With love. She spends the summer on an island and immediately meets a lovely 12 year old Etta and her handsome father. Despite her defined date to leave, Lizzie struggle with falling in love with Dante. This is written so emotionally mature and strong. I loved the dialogue between the character - it was grown up and felt REAL. REAL is the key.

I think that this might look like an easy beach read but it's so much deeper than that. It's about love and being a strong person. It's a book that I will think about for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Lizzie and Dante is a beautiful book by Mary Bly. It must be the top of your summer reading list...with some tissues. I went in almost blind reading this book, so I don't want to give much of the plot away so it can lovingly unfold as you read.

Lizzie is on vacation in Elba with her best friend, Grey, and his famous movie star partner. Lizzie is a Shakespeare Professor at Fordham Univiercity in NYC and has been battling cancer. I love that her friend Grey is an accomplished mystery writer and always looking for what will plague his characters. Grey’s partner, Rohan, is a famous actor from Marvel films and hoping to direct an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet. They meet up with a lovely cast of characters including single dad/famous chef Dante and his tween daughter, Etta. Etta is another narrator/perspective in the book which brings a coming of age levity to the novel as well. Ruby is also a delightful voice in this story. Ruby is a makeup artist and past friend of Rohan. She bumps into everyone and joins them.

Every detail in this book is another layer of storytelling. It doesn't feel that way at all as the reader, it just flows so quickly. We have themes of motherhood, abandonment, found family and Shakespeare. I loved all the discussions of Romeo & Juliet.. I LOVED the food even more! I'm a huge fan of Mary Bly's books (as Eloisa James) and this is a very nice departure from historical romance. I can’t recommend how moving and romantic this book. If you need an escape then look no further than the beautiful island of Elba, its delicisous food and all the joy these characters have to offer.

Thank you so much to #Netgalley for the early read. #MaryBly #LizzieDante