Cute summer romance featuring a new-to-town chef and a woman who's seemingly friends with the whole small town.

It was easy to get into SAVOR IT. Ultimately this was a really nice romance - the two main characters have nice interactions, Sage is nice to Fisher's niece, members of the town are nice to them both. There are a few spicy scenes.

I definitely liked it, though it was hard for me to wrap my head around the main conflict. And I did think some of the descriptions of Sage were a little on the verge of "not like the other girls" (a personal pet peeve). Not a new favorite, but I'd recommend to anyone drawn in by the premise, and I'd try others by Tarah DeWitt.

Pros Karissa Vacker and Zachary Webber did a great job with the narration.

What can I say, I really loved this book. Although it started out a little slow for me, I became completely hooked on these characters. Fisher is in Spunes Oregon to help a restaurant get started as a way to make up for losing a Michelin Star for his employer. Besides the star, Fisher has also lost a sister not long ago and he is taking over raising his teenage niece who is also in Oregon with him for the summer. Fisher and Indy are introduced to their loving and quirky neighbor Sage on their very first night, along with the Spunes area fire and rescue teams. There are some truly funny moments, and the banter and chemistry between Fisher and Sage is extremely well written. That being said, there are also serious moments as well. Sage has also lost loved ones and doesn't always feel confident in relationships. She wants to help everyone, and her menagerie of rescue animals is a testament to that. Watching her break down some of Fisher's walls as well as him give her his admiration just as she was, was the best. There are intimate scenes. While they are open door, they are written in such a beautiful and mature way that I didn't skim over them like I often do. By the end of the book, I was in love with not only the main characters, but the community and its residents as well. I look forward to what Tarah Dewitt has coming up next.

My sincere thanks to St. Martin's Griffin and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read Savor It and have given my unbiased opinion of it in this short review.

Wow this is my first book by this author but it will not be the last. I really enjoyed this entire story from start to finish. Great characters and a great mix of emotions involved in the story.

Well, the cover is nice. Beyond that, it's Hallmark in the least appealing way.

"Savor It" has a rough start: name-dropping everyone in town and corny run-ins on every block. Too much information in the most cliche way. Add that to writing that is telling (and telling and telling and telling) instead of showing, and it's just not at all engaging.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

🌅 Savor It by Tarah DeWitt 🌅

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5

💭 Thoughts:
I enjoyed this one! It started off on the slower side then the second half of the book was AMAZING! The ending nearly brought me to tears in the best, heartwarming way. Sage and Fisher 🥹🥹🥹🥹 I loved the depth of their love story, and the aspects that come with a small town romance. However, if I drank everytime “savor it” was mentioned, I’d be 💀 LOL it was quite overused. Nevertheless, I still loved it and recommend it!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Definitely a decent smalltown romcom with some cozy themes and also a nice touch on dealing with grief. The romance buildup could have been better imo, but it still worked okay. I liked the side characters too. I love a chef MMC and Fisher was a fun one and Sage was a good match. Sometimes the humor didn't mesh with me, but I'd try out another title from DeWitt!

Overall I enjoyed this book and the main characters were relatable. However, it took me until almost the 50% mark to feel invested in the story; it started out slow for me.

What I did love is the relationship development between Sage and Fisher. The author entwined the emotional and physical intimacy so beautifully. I enjoyed reading how they grew, both together and apart.

I knew this book was going to be a winner. The romance just dripped off each page. I was addicted to the back and forth between Fisher and Paige.

This books has all my favorite tropes!!

Dash of Small Town Romance with a Single Dad/Uncle who is also a grump, the sunshine girl next door.

The book was so well written and I fell in love with it.

5 stars!!

Oops, didn’t mean to leave this delightful small town love story on read for so long. Fisher, Michelin-starred chef, grumpy (really, traumatized) surrogate dad to niece Indy, has been fired by his restauranteur boss and shipped off from New York to help set up a new restaurant on the Oregon coast. There, he meets Sage, beloved local, who is certain she is satisfied with her single life with her friends and her rescue animals and her garden. But when Fisher gives her the opportunity to compete in an annual town competition (and hopefully beat her ex and his new fiancé), the two of them strike up a new partnership that may turn into something more.

I loved living in the world of Spunes, Oregon. The food, the quirky, small town characters, the beautiful scenery. Sage is just the right amount of plucky and stubborn and independent, and I love that Fisher first sees her reaching out as a friend to Indy, and that is how he sees how she can help heal him as well. Despite some of the sad events of their past, Savor It is full of joy and laughter.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffing for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a true joy to read from start to finish. I enjoyed the relationship between Fisher and Sage, Indy and Fisher, Sage and her brothers and the numerous members of the small town. This made me want to give up life near a big city and move to Spunes, Oregon.

There were many lines I highlighted and some beautiful life advice throughout. I appreciated the character development of Sage, Indy and Fisher and the fact that they didn’t have to be perfect to form a family.

I will be checking out more books by this author.

3.5 stars rounded down to 3.
I’m honestly very torn on Savor It. I like that the characters have issues and are willing to work on them. It seems odd that they aren’t really in denial about their issues and they go straight to “you’re right, this is a problem, I’ve fixed it”. So it’s almost like the characters are too perfectly imperfect if that makes sense. This caused most conflicts to be minor and short lived which makes the book less entertaining.

What a sweet, small-town romance! This is my first book by the author, and now I want to read more. I love how sweet and simple things started without emphasizing the romance right away. I love that Sage and Fisher got to know each other and helped each other, and I really enjoyed reading their growth and how they slowly let go even if they still had hesitancy. I fell in love with the people from Sprunes. I felt their hesitancy and then their support afterwards. The love during the festival. It always makes you want to live a small-town fairytale as well. I was disappointed with Indy, Fisher's niece, but it totally made sense. She had her own reservations about staying in a small town and leaving the life she and Fisher have in New York. I really loved the part where she realized that geese have bonds for life, which led to one of the sweetest book endings ever. I know, I know it's not something new, but this book still gave me the hallmark of happily ever after and the cozy feeling I love about small-town romance.

Tarah Dewitt the woman that you are!!!

I absolutely loved every single second of this!! Tarah stole my heart when I read Funny Feelings for the first time and now I am fully OBSESSED from reading Savor It. I am such a huge fan of a small town romance and I thought that Tarah excelled and surpassed my expectations with Spunes! (Like that town name truly is the best thing ever)

I really loved the dynamic between Sage and Fisher. I liked their juxtaposing views of small towns and I loved that they were able to grow with one another while keeping up their reuse of fake dating.

The quirky side characters and numerous farm animals throughout the story made my heart so so happy. I was obsessed with the fact that a duck imprinted on Indy and that he was ultimately the tipping point to bringing Indy and Fisher back from NYC.

I am in love with Fisher. He was so hot and I freaking loved how down bad he was for Sage since their first meeting.

Overall, I truly thought that Tarah did such a fantastic job with this story and the balance between the grief that Sage and Fisher shared for their respective loved-ones deaths. The town of Spunes is such a joy and I really hope that she continues this series with Sage's brothers.

Thank you Netgalley, SMP, and Tarah Dewitt for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

✨ 𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰✨

“𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙡𝙖𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙞𝙨 . . . 𝙄 𝙙𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙨, 𝙎𝙖𝙜𝙚, 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙡𝙖𝙪𝙜𝙝 . . .𝙄 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙡𝙖𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙢𝙖𝙮𝙗𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙛𝙞𝙗𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙢𝙚.”

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 🌶️🌶️.5
𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬: 20, 21, 24, 26 & 31
𝐒𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧: 61%
𝐓𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐬: Small town romance, friends-with-benefits, fakish dating, close proximity, grumpy x sunshine
𝐏𝐎𝐕: 1st person, Dual POV
𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Dual

🐷 Chef MMC
🐐 Therapy Positive
🐕 Single Guardian MMC
🐴 Farm animals

This was a cute small-town romance with themes of starting over again, which sounds serious but it was filled with plenty of banter between the characters. I loved the theme that everyone handles trauma differently, and everyone needs grace.

I am not a fan of the friends-with-benefits trope, so the romance element didn’t really work for me. However, this was still a cute story filled with humor.


⚠️𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬:⚠️
Multiple open door scenes with explicit descriptions
Strong language

my first TD book and omg what a BOOK! i finished in less than 24 hours and loved it so much - it wasn’t cliche, i loved the growth and realness of Sage (she is who i would be in another life with the animals LOL) and the journey Fisher went on, and he did what was best for him for once, i was so happy. Indy pissed me off in the beginning but after her little convos with Fisher, i was reminded I was once a teenager with a hard family life and i could understand where she was coming from. i felt like the timing was so good- nothing was rushed, nothing was unbelievable and i loved the little bookish and movie references LOL. it was low spice level, but i felt like that was the right vibe with the story!
Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book!
All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The summer sun beamed down on her shoulders, warming her up from the outside in. After dealing with a tumultuous break-up and the outcome of the devastation… it was nice to feel a piece of herself again outside in the sun.

Savor It is a dual POV, small town romance, following Fisher and Sage. Sage has lived in her small town her whole life and knows everyone, so when a five year relationship crumbles she’s caught in the middle of the repercussions and watches as he moves on. Fisher is a famous chef who is dealing with the loss of his sister and his love for cooking is dwindling. They’re both trying to navigate their new paths in life.

I think this book suffered for me after reading a few phenomenal romances that I loved so much. I thought the premise of this one was cute (love fake dating!) but I couldn’t connect with these characters and didn’t truly feel the chemistry between them. There was also so much going on and as a reader I would have liked to see a few things with a lot of focus, instead of a lot of things with a little focus. While this one had very cute aspects to it… I just didn’t love it.

If you enjoy small town romances, fake dating, slow burn, and friends with benefits stories… then you may end up loving this one!

Thank you NetGalley and Tara DeWitt for the ARC! I’ve been waiting for this book for what seems like forever!! It was welllll worth the wait!! The plot, the characters, the tropes… all perfection!! I’ve never read a story that had so many tropes all meshed into one come together so beautifully, it was all I could ask for and more!!

This a cute small town romance with all the expected charm and tropes, Sage is town favorite - the belle of her small town, a high school teacher on a summer break whose life intertwines with her new neighbor Fisher, a temporary resident of the town. Fisher is a chef who is going through a rough patch in his career along with becoming a guardian for his newly orphaned teenage niece, needless to say it is chaotic but with Sage involuntary entering into their life brings about a new season for them.

The book has everything you'd need in a small town, heart warming romance.However, while this might sound harsh, it also did not bring anything new to the table. I loved Tarah's debut Rootbound, it felt very original and hearty. While Savor it tried to achieve a similar goal with a lot of heart in it, I am not convinced that it delivered it, there is something about the writing I struggled so hard from the very beginning.I know a lot of people enjoyed this one but I had hard time attaching myself to the story or the characters because the writing felt a little too impersonal for me, while I did enjoy the relationship between Fisher and his Niece and their whole journey of healing it wasn't enough for me to hold my attention

I personally think I did not enjoy the lack of dialogue between the main characters for it being a dual POV, they just narrate the story from their POV for the majority rather than conversing. It kept taking me out of the story, it also had lot of irrelevant information in these chapters as these characters live each day. I think it failed to create magic out of mundane like it intended, I loved the overall idea of the story and the quirky small town. It had lot of potential but unfortunately it lacked in execution for me personally

This book was absolutely incredible 😭
They had me giggling, swooning, kicking my feet and crying. I can not wait for more connecting stories as I adore all the characters and side characters. Tarah's books are always so raw and real 🥰

I voluntarily read and reviewed this earc via Netgalley and highly recommend this book and all her others.

I ADORED this book. Small town books will always have a place in my heart and this book was no different. I loved the witty banter and the characters. There were swoon worthy moments that made my heart melt and others where I was laughing from the joy of it. These characters manage to feel real and lovable.

The town felt very quaint and reminded me of Gilmore Girls. You could feel the familiarity of it in each of Sage's chapters and how dear this place was to her. I am also a huge fan of puns and this book was full of them! This was a divine summer read that I cannot recommend enough. This book perfectly balanced more serious moments and discussions with the more silly ones.