Rounded down from 4.5 stars.

I am Lizzie Blake, Lizzie Blake is me. I loved the ADHD rep, and seeing a woman with ADHD that affects her daily life find her happiness and love.

𝘓𝘪𝘻𝘻𝘪𝘦 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘬𝘦'𝘴 𝘉𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 just as the title suggests follows Lizzie along with Rake as they overtake a confusing but determined journey of becoming co-parents to their little one alongside fighting against the blurring lines between their rigid self-imposed rules and growing attraction.

- ~ -

I'll preface this review by saying I'm not usually a fan of the accidental pregnancy trope BUT this book was truly wonders.

This story, despite all its grave topics, had a whimsical feel to it.
I was glad to see that Lizzie with Rake could truly shine with all her quirks that made her 𝘩𝘦𝘳.
And yes while one of the said characters might've messed up once or twice, I won't deny that they're still perfect for each other.

And when we finally got to know the particularly heartwarming reason behind Rake's nickname for Lizzie, I could practically hear my heart sighing in contentment (they're so cute together!!!!).

- ~ -

4.06 / 5✩

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘵. 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘯'𝘴 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘐 𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 & 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘥. 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘸𝘯.

Mazey does it again! This story about Lizzie and her one night stand with Rake and how they dealt with what happens afterwards. I enjoyed the depth of Lizzie with her ADHD and how she deals with it. I love seeing how Lizzie and Rake development and all the fun and tender moments between them. Lizzie's friends are amazing and added a great dimension to the book.

Thank you @netgalley for ARC.

The storyline ws great and the love story, lovely. I loved the little plot twist and Rake was a saint. And AHHHH I hate giving less than give stars but dang, as someone with ADHD I read this one personally. I love a flawed character but it was like every. single. one of her flat was because of "adhd" and maybe her terrible mom. She was a little too raunchy for me, a little too quick to blame her letting others down on ADHD. There was no redemption.

This is a romantic comedy of hilarious proportions. The dialogue is laugh out loud funny. Lizzie’s character as an adult with ADHD offers many opportunities from mishaps and mayhem. Rake, the buttoned up Aussie, becomes totally unglued in her presence. It is a delightful and fun plot that holds many hidden Easter eggs that the readers will not want to miss. It is flirty and warm all the way to the very happy ending.

This is a Young Adult Romance, and this is the second book in A Brush with Love series. I do not think this is a bad book, but I do think this is not the book for me. I ended up DNFing this book because I just did not love the writing style or pulled into the storyline. I did read the first book in this series, and I did not love or hate that book. I wanted to give this author one more try before saying that this author was not one for me. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.

Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake by Mazey Eddings ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lizzie is a hot mess express living with ADHD and trying to balance that with holding down a job at a bakery. When Rake crashes into her life, she’s not prepared for where it takes her.

I loved this book so much. The representation of adhd was honest and compassionate, the characters were interesting people, and you can’t help but root for Lizzie. I found myself identifying with her so much, and it was nice to feel that connected with a character. Wonderfully written.

And yes, it’s a little spicy for those of you who love that in a romance (I know I do).

Thanks to @netgalley for the chance to read this! Lizzie Blake comes out on September 6th!

For anyone that strongly dislikes the "pregnancy trope", I want to start my review by saying: When I started this book, I re-read the synopsis and realized with horror that the book involved an unexpected pregnancy. While I'm usually not a fan at all, while reading this book I realized I didn't mind it for this story! Instead of being something tossed in so that a character's hand or relationship would be forced, in this case it was the premise of the book and therefore wasn't just something that would aggravate the reader mid-book.

I give Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake a 3 star rating! While I haven't read "A Brush With Love", I figured I could still read this as a stand-alone.

This is definitely an insta-love type of romance. I don't do well with insta-love, hence the lowered rating, but if it's something that's up your alley (along with 'he falls first') this would be the romance for you. This book is a feel good romance, with characters taking high risks for each other throughout.

While there were a lot of cheesy and unrealistic lines from Rake, there were a lot of funny ones from Lizzie that I feel made up for the dialogue. Also, I was nottt a fan of the "do you ever stop talking?" lines, I don't understand how that can be a romantic way of kissing someone, especially with all of Lizzie's insecurities regarding her ADHD. The ADHD representation was also appreciated, although I do feel that it might be too descriptive/repetitive for readers that also have ADHD.

While the end conflict and plot did not have too much substance, I thought the romance was cute and did enjoy most of the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC in exchange for a review!

This one is not my favourite compared to A Brush With Love but I ADORED the characters and the sh** they had to get through in order to get to their HEA!!! Our MC are funny, sweet, adoring, caring, wonderful and assertive! I loved it, I loved the steam, I loved the genuinity!

Reading Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake was definitely not a mistake for me. This book was a super sweet romance that I couldn’t read fast enough. I loved that this book included real life situations (ADHD) but represented in a rom com style while still making them relevant and prevalent. I liked that there was very little of the “miscommunication” trope and the characters actually used their words like adults.

If you are a fan of historical romance novels, this book has so many references to them and I thought they were incorporated in so well. Even if you aren’t a fan of the accidental pregnancy trope, this one might work for you. It definitely doesn’t have the tired recycled storyline of most accidental pregnancies, this is fresh and witty.

Mazey Eddings really hit it out of the park again.

Here we have Lizzie, a self described HOT MESS. She has ADHD and it has hindered her a lot in life and leaves her misunderstood by many. After losing her job she does something out of character and sleeps with someone beyond a one night stand. Rake is an Aussie in Philly for a work trip, and is endeared by everything Lizzie is. After a whirlwind fling they both expect to never see each other again. Then Lizzie finds out she is pregnant, and Rake is the father. After letting him know Rake decides to uproot his whole life and move to the US to support Lizzie and the baby. Will the whole living together co parenting work? Will they keep their vow to stay platonic?

Okay I will be honest here, I loved A Brush With Love, and when i saw this one was going to be accidentally pregnant trope I was nervous. This is not a plot device I would say I love or even like, but the sign of a good book and author is being able to do something you don't traditionally like in a book and make it not matter to the point that you love the book. I read this in a few hours while on vacation and I could not put it down. I saw so much of myself in Lizzie, the female friendships were so real, not perfect but that is what made it believable. This was another hit and I am so glad I got to read it early.

I just finished Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake and while I had fun reading it, it wasn't my favorite. Although I liked the main character Lizzie and followed her love interest with Australian hunk, Rake, their insta-love fell a little short for me. If you're into quick whirlwind romances, then this book might be for you. For me, I think I'm just maybe not the target audience for this one as I found it all a little unbelievable. Some parts of the story really kept my interest, yet other parts seemed a little all over the place for my taste, but overall this was a quick read, so if you're into:

💛Fast Paced Romance
💛The pregnancy trope
💛Spice
💛Opposite Attract
💛Happy Endings

This book is definitely for you!

There were things about the book I loved and things I really struggled with. It had 5-star energy with some 1-star hiccups, so I'm giving it a 3-star review and here's why:

5-Star Elements:
-REPRESENTATION! I absolutely LOVE that we're getting neurodivergent representation by a neurodivergent author. It's first-hand and so unbelievably important to share. Mazey Eddings wrote Lizzie so wonderfully. We got to see the great things that come with neurodiversity and the challenges, too, with jobs, families, and generally being understood. This dedication will go down in history as one of my favorites.
-Sex positivity! Ballpark.. how many books have you read where the male love interest is infamous for one-night stands but the female MC would never? It's so out of character for her to do this, then they fall in love. MMMMKAY, great, but what if it WAS in character for her?! Mazey Eddings flips this trope and gives us a super sex-positive MC who leads with her desire for a one-night stand. We've absolutely normalized men doing it, we have GOT to stop vilifying women for doing the same. exact. THING.
-The writing. The pacing. The absolute FUN!

1-Star Elements:
As a woman of child-bearing age living in America during the repeal of Roe v Wade, let me just acknowledge that much of my feedback here is influenced by current times.
-The title. I get it. A baby with Rake is not Lizzie's plan. She had a plan and something went wrong in that plan, and she ended up pregnant. I don't love that this entire title alludes to an unplanned pregnancy as a mistake. I understand that there are other things Eddings is perhaps referring to as the "mistake" but those mistakes are what cause the pregnancy (directly or indirectly) and this just did not sit well with me.
-*SPOILER*: The situation with Rake's ex. It's such a passing comment that she had an abortion without telling him. And I think it's great in some ways that Eddings gave a woman in this book the ability to choose her abortion without her partner's input and without a full dissertation as to why. BUUUUUT, she becomes the bad guy in Rake's life and the book vilifies her a bit for her choice. It makes sense in the flow of the book, but overall felt in poor taste.

This is my first book by Mazey Eddings and won't be my last. I'm not sure if this will make it to the top of my recommendation list, but I did enjoy it. Thank you so much to St, Martin's press for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book.

While the pregnancy trope isn't my favorite trope in the romance world, I really did enjoy this book for the most part. Lizzie and Rake's relationship starts off as a one night (well technically, two night) stand and blossoms from there. Lizzie's character was great as I also have ADHD and I really felt for her and really understood her. I felt like the two of them balanced each other out! They both had past baggage that they were dealing with, but were really able to deal with it well together.

Looking forward to reading another Mazey Eddings book in the future!

I am writing to you from the inside of an actual, non-fiction dystopia. The spoilers start now.

I never liked the evil ex trope, and I particularly disliked the evil ex had an abortion variation. I used to come across it frequently in the late 1980s – 1990s. I haven’t seen much of it recently and I’m not at all happy about coming across it in Mazey Edding’s Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake.

The book isn’t explicitly anti-abortion, and I have no idea which side Eddings puts herself on the pro/anti abortion divide. She made a choice to make Rake’s trauma be that his ex had an abortion without telling him after having cheated on him. We see for the first 3/4 of the book that Rake has a deep sadness and some trauma that made him swear off love and feelings. And then the bomb drops that he found out about his ex’s abortion and cheating. So here we have the protagonist – Lizzie Blake, who on getting accidentally pregnant is immediately, absolutely sure she wants to be a mother vs. the ex who got an abortion and isn’t sure if Rake was the father because she was cheating on him. Eddings chose an ex’s abortion to be her male main character’s trauma. It was a choice that made it through drafts, revisions and edits. She really didn’t have to make this particular choice. There are a lot of ways besides secret abortion that past romantic relationships can make you not want to be open to love again. Men can want to be involved in parenting the child that results from an unplanned pregnancy. Eddings made a deliberate and unnecessary choice. As the author, she is the god of her fictional world.

But it’s just fiction! Yes, Lizzie Blake’s world is fiction. I live in Texas in August of 2022 and abortion is now illegal in this state. It’s not just bad cheating women who are impacted by abortion bans. In fact, “because I was cheating on my super nice boyfriend and didn’t want him to know” is a very rare motivation for having an abortion. Most abortions occur because of finances and timing. This abortion ban also means that pregnant people who wanted their pregnancies aren’t able to get the health care they need when the pregnancy goes wrong.

Of course this one book won’t make a difference either way, and my review won’t make a difference in this book. But I now live in a state where I am no longer an equal citizen, where women and people with uteruses have few legal rights to make choices about their bodies and to access the healthcare they need than they did last year. I’m pretty angry about it.

DNF at 77%

I received this as an advance reader copy from NetGalley. My opinions are my own and voluntarily given.

I absolutely loved this book. I think I liked it so much because I can see a lot of myself in Lizzie and how she attempts to tackle the world. This story was so endearing; I loved how passionate both Rake and Lizzie are for one another.

I liked this continuation of the A Brush With Love series even more than its adorable toothy precursor! Which is surprising, because I generally hate the unexpected pregnancy trope. I probably wouldn't have picked up an unexpected pregnancy book as a standalone, but I loved Mazey's writing in the first book and heard amazing things about this one from friends who read it before me.

Lizzie Blake was especially steamy, and filled with pining on both sides when Rafe and Lizzie find themselves living together in a studio apartment.

I found the descriptions of Lizzie's ADHD to be incredibly readable and descriptive, and it was so easy to understand her frustration when things didn't go they way she intended.

It was fun to see some of the characters from Book 1 again, and I'm looking forward to more in this series!

I can't get enough of Mazey Eddings humor! The author perfectly captures the daily struggles of living with adult ADHD without it taking over the story. My heart hurt for Lizzie and what she endures on a daily basis, especially how hard it is to maintain your focus. I absolutely wanted to punch her parents in the face and would fight anyone that treats their children that horribly.

Rake is the Aussie of my dreams and I couldn't get enough of him! I'd love to see more of him, possibly with appearances in future books? His willingness to step up to the plate and be honest from the get-go will make any reader swoon.

An accidental pregnancy is just what my heart needed today and this book delivered on every level. With hilarious banter, plenty of steamy moments, and moments that will melt your heart - this book is a must read for the summer!

I suspect this author is one whose writing style doesn't work for me. Sometimes I don't enjoy a particular book by a new-to-me author but still want to try that author's books again. Here though I am likely to pass on future Eddings books for a few reasons that I'll cover in my review.

I like some of the author's representation of her heroine living with ADHD. Lizzie's struggles felt authentic and worthy of empathy. Some of the strategies for coping with life obstacles and time management were interesting and most likely beneficial to many neurotypical people too. ADHD is handled well from the individual person's perspective as well as how others view her. Having said that, I quickly became confused by Lizzie's larger-than-life personality, and how or even if it fits into the author's ideas on ADHD. Lizzie is scattered and unfocused, which is understandable. But why is she so crude in her language choices and behaviors? Rake, the hero of the story, finds her crude language and at times outlandish public social behavior endearing, and I do think it's meant to be a dividing point between those who are able to value Lizzie for her big heart and uniqueness and those who can't abide a non conformist among them. I felt uncomfortable at my failure to find Lizzie charming when she was suddenly blurting out at a dinner party how well endowed her new boyfriend is. The book is filled with any number of such scenes that felt kind of cringe-y to me rather than charming, but also marks me as someone unable to embrace the wonderfulness of her social behavior. Lizzie finds her passion in life in the book as an erotic baker whose focus is on female genitalia. Okay, fine, but I needed clarification from the author why Lizzie is an exhibitionist and has an identity wrapped up in being sexually non conformist. Is Lizzie a free spirit or someone struggling to define herself outside of her sexuality? How does ADHD interconnect with Lizzie's sexual issues? I think there could be links but I struggled to make them and ended up feeling confused by her characterization.

The other significant problem in this book for me concerns Lizzie's pregnancy, which happens in the first couple of chapters and then takes center stage for the rest of the novel. Lizzie and Rake hook up at a bar and go their separate ways, and then weeks later she finds herself pregnant. The rest of the story revolves around the two strategizing how to co-parent while trying to sort out their personal relationship and get to know each other. I found this aspect of the book disconcerting in its stark and simplistic and even binary representations. Lizzie is the Good Woman because she chooses to carry her pregnancy to term. Rake's former girlfriend is the Bad Woman because she secretly had an abortion (and after cheating on him). Rake is the Good Man because he leaps at the chance to become a father two mere minutes after discovering a woman who is an essential stranger to him is having his baby. Both Lizzie and Rake throw themselves wholeheartedly into impending parenthood with no reservations or concerns. The book too is riddled with other one-dimensional characters, like Rake's misogynist villain of a boss, Lizzie's dismissive and toxic mother, and even Lizzie's misogynist first boyfriend. Lizzie has a group of loving and committed female friends who are also clearly marked as characters for future books in this series. But I could never distinguish any of them from each other - they are all fun-loving, beautiful and wonderful -- and all left me with absolutely no interest in reading their individual stories.

Mazey Eddings has been getting lots of hype, which is perplexing to me based on this book

Oh my, prepare yourself for some steam straight out of the gate!

The best part about the book for me was Lizzie, a protagonist who is living with ADHD. I learned so much about what an adult with ADHD goes through on a daily basis. There were times when Lizzie explained a routine that lacked organization or focus that sounded exhausting to me. Now, I have a better understanding of what a person living with ADHD is going through.

But, let’s get to the relationship! Rake was a hunky Australian hero and his insta-connection with Lizzie was hot, very hot! When Lizzie ends up pregnant, Rake does the right thing and learns what Lizzie needs and how to best support her.

I enjoyed this book for its depiction of what life is like for people with ADHD, the supportive relationship between Rake and Lizzie, and the idea that we have the power to swap a toxic family for a supportive found family.